Huck's New Boat

Another rugged individualist has enlisted in the U.S. defense program--which needs more of them. Frank Pembroke ("Huck") Huckins is a blunt Boston Yankee with confidence to burn. Last year he told the Navy he could make a motor torpedo boat which wouldn't pound the teeth out of its crew. To most old salts, this sounded fantastic. But since Huckins was willing to spend his own money on the boat--if the Navy would just supply the engines--the Navy turned him loose.

At his Huckins Yacht Corp. yards in Jacksonville, Fla., Huck went to work. He locked himself in his laboratory, neglected his family, cut his friends, put in 100 hours a week over a drawing board. Last July his PT-69, a neat, sleek boat which jumps from wave to wave like a rock skipping over the water, was ready for Navy tests. Last week the Navy showed that it shared some of Huck's confidence that he had built the fastest, smoothest torpedo boat in the world: it gave him a contract (about $1,000,000) to build eight of them as a starter.

Although the PT-69's specifications are a military secret, pictures show that she is about 70 ft. long, about 16 ft. in the beam, carries two torpedo tubes and has a stern gangway for depth charges. The three engines pack enough power to run away from destroyers (i.e., 45 knots or more) except in rough weather. Since such boats have little offensive value unless used in large flotillas, the Navy may decide to put little Huckins Yacht Corp. (normal gross: less than $500,000 a year) into the defense business in a big way.

Huck started the yacht company in 1928 after selling a family lumber business because he liked boats better. He is the designer; his partner, a close-mouthed Yankee named Henry Skinner Baldwin, is the businessman. Their Fairform Flyers (produced at a profit each year even during the depression) are expensive, carefully engineered boats known as the Duesenbergs of the small motor yacht class.

Spry, roundheaded Frank Huckins likes to show up at his office at noon, work until late at night. In his social life, as at work, he is a bristling individualist. He has outraged Jacksonville hostesses by taking his own brand of Scotch to cocktail parties, refusing to attend dinners unless the menu suited him. A hater of games, he goes to sleep on any handy sofa if someone suggests a round of bridge.

In his dealings with the Navy, Huck was equally brash. When the Navy suggested that he change the location of the PT-69's toilet, he replied that he would then have to run its drain pipe into either the exhaust or the officers' filing cabinet.

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