RECENT COMMENTS

Newton Ancarrow’s beautiful boats

Known now for the fishing and as part of the Manchester Slave Trail and the Poop Loop trail just across the river from Rocketts Landing, Ancarrow’s Landing takes its name as the former site of Newton Ancarrow’s old speedboat-manufacturing factory.

The founding of Ancarrow Marine is surrounded in lore that suits the the beauty of the fast &expensive machines themselves:

Popular boating said he wanted to buy a fast boat, and for the seller to guarantee it’s speed. When no guarantees were made to back up the sellers boasts, it was recommended to Newton that he should build one himself if he thought he could do any better. He decided to show them up and did just that.

A New York Times piece on the 1964 National Motor Boat Show gives an indication of just how special Ancarrow’s boats were:

A flash of black … a glint of gold … she’s gone!” reads the brochure—and that’s about it. With 400 horsepower in a Chrysler engine and Latham supercharger, the bullet-shaped Consul does better than 70 miles an hour.

Nothing else built by Ancar­row’s company, Ancarrow Ma­rine, Inc., of Richmond, Va., is that fast. Nor is anything else in the show with the exception of Miss Bardahl, an unlimited hydroplane designed purely for racing.

— ∮∮∮ —

— ∮∮∮ —

PHOTO via Ancarrow Marine

— ∮∮∮ —

PHOTO via Ancarrow Marine

— ∮∮∮ —

PHOTO via VCU Library

— ∮∮∮ —

PHOTO via VCU Library

— ∮∮∮ —

PHOTO via VCU Library

— ∮∮∮ —

Ancarrow’s later influential efforts as a pioneering environmental activist are described in Ann Woodlief’s In River Time – The Way of the James and in Harry Kollatz’ True Richmond Stories.

A version of this piece first appeared in Shockoe News on February 18, 2008.