Henry Ford quietly built at least eight boats in the early 1920s, and the last survivor, named Evangeline, carried a 450-horsepower V12 engine repurposed from a World War I fighter plane. It reportedly hit 49 mph in 1924, fast enough to outrun dedicated race boats of the day, before a fire at the Gold Cup ended Ford’s interest in racing on water for good.
Henry Ford apparently had “several†boats during his life, built between 1920 and 1924. This particular one – the last of eight built – is the only one that exists today. It’s also the only one to have been ordered by Henry himself.
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It was named Evangeline, after Ford racing driver Raymond Dahlinger’s wife. More so, the story goes that Evangeline was a long-time Ford employee and close friend of Henry’s: she quickly became his personal secretary and was apparently one of the ten most influential people close to the Ford family.
So, that’s the name, let’s talk about the boat. It’s 33ft, and was built over the winter of 1923-1924 by the Hacker Boat Company (again, another lifelong Ford friend), and Ford itself. It featured a wraparound windscreen, louvered deck ventilators and four bucket-seat cockpit arrangement. Said features were wrapped into a bodyshape that today still looks really, really lovely.
Lovely power, too. The engine was lifted from a marine-converted World War I Liberty aircraft engine: a monster 27-litre V12 producing 450hp, and 1,250lb ft of torque. Suffice to say, power wasn’t really an issue.
What became an issue was an incident during the 1924 Gold Cup boat race: one of the eight boats Ford had – the one dubbed ‘Nine Nighty Nine’ – caught fire, and Henry Ford was said to have halted his involvement in boat racing for the time being. The whereabouts of the other seven boats remains a mystery, but Evangeline continued to be used.
An aircraft engine built to power World War I fighter planes ended up strapped into a 33-foot pleasure boat commissioned by the man who put America on wheels. Henry Ford was not just building cars in the early 1920s — he quietly built at least eight boats, and the last of them is the only one that survives today. It carries a name most people associate with poetry, not horsepower, and an engine so overbuilt for a personal boat that it outran actual race boats of its era. One bad afternoon at a boat race would end Ford’s interest in the water for good.
A World War I Fighter Engine, Repurposed for the Water
The boat, named Evangeline after Raymond Dahlinger’s wife — a longtime Ford employee and Henry’s personal secretary — was built over the winter of 1923-1924 by the Hacker Boat Company working alongside Ford’s own team. Its 33-foot hull carried a wraparound windscreen, louvered deck ventilators, and a four-bucket-seat cockpit layout. Power came from a marine-converted Liberty L-12 aircraft engine, originally designed for WWI fighter planes: a 27-liter V12 producing 450 horsepower and 1,250 lb-ft of torque, enough to push Evangeline to a clocked 49 mph in 1924 — faster than many purpose-built race boats of the period.
Why Ford Walked Away from Boat Racing Entirely
One of Ford’s eight boats caught fire during the 1924 Gold Cup race, and the incident was enough to convince Henry Ford to step back from boat racing altogether. Evangeline stayed in Dearborn for years afterward before being sold in the 1950s, passing through New York and eventually Long Island in 1961, and finally landing in Southern California by 1982 — still unrestored. Decades later it crossed the auction block, drawing collector interest less for its Ford badge than for its status as the last physical proof of a chapter in Ford’s history most people never learn about.
An Engine Built for War, Repurposed for Play
The Liberty L-12 was developed during World War I specifically for military aircraft, and the United States government ultimately contracted roughly 20,000 of them from manufacturers including Ford, Packard, Buick, Cadillac, and Lincoln to meet wartime demand. Surplus Liberty engines became popular after the war for exactly the kind of extreme repurposing seen in Evangeline, since their sheer power-to-weight ratio made them attractive for boats and land speed record cars alike.
Henry Ford’s Racing History Ran Deeper Than Boats
Ford’s personal interest in speed didn’t start with boats; decades earlier he had built and driven the 999 race car with driver Barney Oldfield, using racing wins to help establish the Ford name before the Model T ever existed. That competitive streak followed him into different eras and different vehicles throughout his life, of which the Evangeline boat project was simply a later, wealthier expression.
Gold Cup Racing Was Serious Business
The American Power Boat Association’s Gold Cup, the race where one of Ford’s boats caught fire, was already one of the most prestigious events in unlimited powerboat racing by the 1920s, drawing wealthy industrialists and serious competitors willing to run massive, dangerous engines in pursuit of speed on the water. That combination of prestige and danger is exactly what drew figures like Ford into the sport in the first place, and exactly what could end their involvement after a single bad afternoon.
A Rare Survivor From a Forgotten Chapter
Most of the boats built by wealthy industrialists during this era have long since been scrapped, lost, or simply forgotten, which is part of what makes Evangeline’s survival into the present day so unusual. Unlike Ford’s cars, which are preserved by the thousands in museums and private collections, a single-digit number of boats from this specific chapter of Ford’s personal history are known to survive at all.
The Man Who Dominated Boat Racing at the Time
Gar Wood, the era’s most famous American powerboat racer, won five consecutive Gold Cup titles between 1917 and 1921 and later added nine straight wins in the Harmsworth Trophy, dominating the sport so completely that race organizers rewrote the rules specifically to limit his boats. Wealthy figures like Henry Ford building and racing their own boats during this period were competing, directly or indirectly, in a sport Wood’s engineering had already reshaped.
Wooden Boats Don’t Survive by Accident
A wooden-hulled boat from the 1920s surviving into the present day typically requires generations of careful storage and periodic restoration, since wood, unlike a car’s steel body, is far more vulnerable to rot, moisture damage, and simple neglect over a century. Evangeline’s survival through multiple owners and multiple states says as much about the people who chose to preserve it as it does about how it was originally built.
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