Speed and Spray Magazine Reports From The New Riva Boat Plant

Today we are traveling to beautiful Lake D’Iseo, Italy with writer Michele Vernola. It’s 1956 and Michele has made her way to the Riva boat factory to do a story for Speed and Spray – The International Magazine of Powerboating.

The name Riva was still relatively new to many boaters in America by the mid 1950’s (the first Riva Tritone shipped to the USA was “Perlita Too” in 1953), and Michele’s story and experience visiting the now famous factory is great to read. Woody Boater contributor Cobourg Kid originally found the February 1956 issue of Speed and Spray on the great website Boatsport.org earlier this year, and sent us a link to the story.

We thought it would make for some fun winter content and serve as a reminder of how we once shared information about the world of wooden boating back in the day. To make the story easier to read today, we copied the text & captions exactly as it was written in the magazine and enlarged the black & white photos from the original 58 year old scanned magazine, so they may appear a bit grainy – but they are still fun to see. – Texx

ON THE CONTINENT
Italy… …Riva Docks
by MICHELE VERNOLA
Re-printed from Speed and Spray Magazine – February 1956

FIVE YEARS AGO Mr. Carlo Riva, Jr., had a brilliant idea, as it has been showed, to take over the plant from his father, who was already too old to stay still behind the desk. But the reason why the old man kept his important job much longer than he supposed to, was that he didn’t trust his son Carlo very much as a capable man to run his own business like he did for all his life.

Though Mr. Riva senior was wrong about that, because his son proved to be at the height of the situation despite any bad consideration that his father and many other people had about him.

In fact Mr. Carlo, as first thing, built a brand new plant on the east shore of the Lake D’Iseo, which is located near the city of Brescia, (Italy) where the famous Mille Miglia (automobile) road race is organized since 1927.

The second step was the exclusiveness that Mr. Riva Jr. got from Chris-Craft in Italy, which then gave a new face to the old name of Rivas, who before that time where more or less like the other Italian boat-builders, I main small shops on artisan scale, but always they produced excellent hulls for any purpose: sports, race and tourism.

  

But since the new plant is on, the Riva docks suspended any activity about the race-hulls and started to work seriously just on one type: the Cruiser, which is built in many different sizes; small, medium and large. Which thing make Riva Docks one of the best of it’s kind in the whole of Europe and as mass production it can even compete with some makes of the United States of America.

This year, for instance, they built one hundred already, in order to please all the calls from all over the world, which confirms not only what has been said above, but the excellency of the job itself.

When last summer Mr. and Mrs. Paul Sawyer and I visited the Riva Docks, Mr. Carlo Riva personally took us around the whole plant with his great pleasure while Erminie and Paul (Sawyer) were so surprised to see the precision, the cleanliness and the beauty of the Riva works.

  
  

The plant is equipped with the most modern wood-machinery, the wood used is Honduras mahogany, so the varnish and paint also, while the engine, the board instruments, the transmission shaft and propeller made with monel-metal are from U.S.A. – All these things together with the skillful work of the Italian artists made Riva Docks famous all over the world.

Michele Vernola – Speed and Spray Magazine

Special thanks to our friend Ed Hatch at Boatsport.org for giving us permission to re-publish this story from Speed and Spray Magazine. Ed has done an outstanding job with this website, which has a has a ton of interesting information on classic boat racing. – Texx
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Mario Verga & LAURA 3 – Fast Facts

Mario Verga from Milan, Italy was the owner of a silk factory in the Como lake area of Italy and was a very famous and winning pilot of the top hydroplanes classes in Europe. He also raced in the USA in 1953, setting impressive speeds.

Verga and his competitors speeds prompted the Italian Motornautical Federation to offer a prize to whichever Italian could break the unlimited record which stood at that time to Stanley St Clair Sayres of Seattle, who in July 1952 had taken his ironically named Slo-Mo-Shun-IV to 178.497 mph. The Federation offered a handsome five million lire, stipulating that the hull, engine and fuel, like the driver, had to be of Italian origin. At today’s exchange rate it may not seem much, but more than 60 years ago it was a sound incentive, and there were three men prepared to accept the challenge: Achille Castoldi, Selva and Verga. – David Tremayne, Lesliefield.com

In an attempt to break the speed record, Mario Verga chose an experimental boat named LAURA 3, a Timossi three-point hydroplane from Italy.

Powered by twin-Type-159 Alfa-Romeo engines, Laura 3’s combined power plants displaced only 1500 cubic centimeters but were supercharged and together developed 800 horsepower. The 29-foot 10-inch hull with an 8-foot 6-inch beam weighed a mere 2094 pounds, was driven by World Champion Mario Verga.

LAURA 3 had been purposely made to break the world water straight-away speed record of the SLO MO SHUN (178.497 MPH).

In 1954, on Italy’s Lake of Sarnico, Verga was shooting for Slo-mo-shun IV’s world straightaway record of 178.497. LAURA 3 reached an officially clocked 186.6 when the hull reared, plunged free of the water, and vanished in a cloud of spray. It looked to observers that Verga’s craft had been picked up and vengefully smashed to kindling by some unseen hand. A diver later recovered both the battered hull and the late driving star’s body.

To learn more about World Champion hydroplane racer Mario Verga – Check out David Tremayne’s story titled The Glorious Obsession Of Mario Verga on www.lesliefield.com

Thanks to Vintagehydroplanes.com for todays photos of LAURA 3, Click Here to see more.

Texx
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