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Bill
Hamilton RIVER KING |
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 "Bill
Hamilton saw the sea for the first time when he was four years old - and
he was delighted. He trapped some sea water in a bottle so he could make
the tide work at home. He was disappointed, of course, but Bill Hamilton
was to spend a lifetime testing, and then defeating, the tides and
currents of man and nature." Maurice Shadbolt, 'The Man Who Rolled
Back the Rivers'Bill Hamilton's jet-boat revolutionised river and shallow-water navigation. It enabled people to travel for the first time, at high speed - up rivers and waterways all over the world. It was a craft that sped people up the Colorado, Ganges, Amazon, Congo, Mekong, Yangtse and countless other rivers. It opened the door to exploration and the supply of goods and medicines to otherwise inaccessible areas. The jet-boat also became an exciting new form of recreation. It situated Hamilton proudly in the lineage of New Zealand inventors who answered our need for speed.
His clear love for inventing solutions to navigate nature started as a young boy in his self-made shed. In 1912, at the age of 13, he constructed a land yacht and subsequently terrified neighbours' horses as he sped along deserted roads. That same year, handicapped by the lack of electricity in his shed, Hamilton constructed a dam and water wheel to bring electricity to Ashwick Station. This modernization came two years before the government constructed the first operational hydro-electrical station in 1914.
Bill's formal education began at Waihi Preparatory School near Temuka, and he was later sent to board at Christ's College in Christchurch. He found urban life in Christchurch life tiresome, away from the open potential of the alpine rivers but his separation from the Mackenzie country would not last long. In 1916, when his older half-brother Cyril was killed in World War One, Hamilton left school to assist in running Ashwick Station. He went on to purchase Irishman Creek Station in South Canterbury in 1921 for £16 000 with the help of a £9000 loan from his father. The new purchase would become the site of the workshop where he incubated his many inventions. The lack of suitable machinery for developing the farm prompted him to buy his first lathe, and then to build a larger workshop. In 1926, Hamilton erected his own dam to generate electricity for his workshop and farm machinery for developing, and, when this dam was damaged, he built a larger one using an earth moving machine he designed and built for the purpose.
During the 1920s Bill became fascinated with the new sport of motor-racing and purchased a Bentley racing car on a trip to England in 1923 and began racing competitively. In early 1924 he returned home to Irishman Creek with his new bride, Peggy Wills, an English girl who shared Bill's love for the outdoors. Back home, Hamilton won the 50 mile New Zealand Motor Cup in 1925, and went on to claim the Australasian speed record in 1928 (he was the first person in the Southern Hemisphere to officially clock over 100mph). In 1930 he took his Bentley to England for the Brooklands Easter meet where he won all his races - the first driver to do so.
The Depression years saw Hamilton design and build a myriad of machines for a living. Raw materials were brought into Irishman Creek and engineered into finished products: a shingle loader, several scoops for earthmoving, a hay lift, a water sprinkler, an air compressor, an air conditioner, and others. The scoops were to be a saviour in the tough years as wool prices plummeted, being used the length of New Zealand to carve out airports and roads (they were later manufactured under license in Britain). In 1939 CWF (Charles William Fielden) Hamilton & Co Ltd, was formed, and Bill's remote mountain workshop became a factory, manned by shearers, musterers, and farmhands. The company's first contract was for an airstrip in Twizel. Bill had by now retired from competitive racing, but utilized his Bentley for high speed 'smoothness' tests on many of the airstrips he constructed. During World War II the factory produced precision munitions (such as Bren gun firing pins that required very accurate engineering). Maurice Shadbolt writes, "accountants and economists were baffled by this factory risen from nowhere, so far off the beaten track and remote from markets - and by a designer and engineer who had never had an hour's formal training".
A lack of power supply hindered further development and after World War II, Hamilton opened an engineering business in Christchurch. It thrived, allowing him to concentrate on R&D at Irishman's Creek. He helped design and build the first rope ski tow in New Zealand, and in 1951 at the age of 52, he revisited his boyhood idea of creating a boat that could travel upriver with ease and would be able to navigate the shallow waters around his Station. |
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Acknowledgements: Our thanks and appreciation to Tony Kean of CWF Hamilton & Co Ltd for his assistance in the preparation of this story. Web: See the "Hamilton turn" in action and view the inner workings of the Jet on the Queenstown Shotover Jet site Twin Rivers Jet corporate site Bill Hamilton in the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame Books:
Hamilton, Peggy. Wild Irishman: The Story of Bill Hamilton. Reed, 1969.
Kean, Tony. The Ballad of Bill Hamilton. Spiderweb Publishing, 2002. Shadbolt, Maurice. "Bill Hamilton", Love and Legend - Some 20th Century New Zealanders". Hodder and Stoughton, 1976. Film: Against
the Flow - the Hamilton Jet Tale
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Back
yard laboratory Charles William Feilden Hamilton was born in 1899 on the
remote Ashwick Station near Fairlie in South Canterbury. The
landscape is carved by mighty rivers; the Waitaki, Clutha and Rakaia,
flowing from the Southern Alps. For centuries Maori had
used elegant mokihi (canoes made by drying and lashing raupo reeds
together) to transport catches of fish and birds downriver and to ferry
people across these waterways. As a child Hamilton built rafts and
canoes for play, to cavort down the flood-prone Opihi River (a tributary
of the Waitaki). To his frustration he required the use of his dog,
towing a homemade raft trailer, to get back upstream to start again.
Finding a practical solution to avoid the trudge upriver would be the
impetus for Hamilton's waterjet design.
