THEN: During the Gold Cup on Aug. 7, 1954, onlookers surround the Detroit-based Gale IV hydroplane after driver “Wild Bill” Cantrell beached it in the lakeside garden of Dr. Forest Black six houses south of the Mercer Island floating bridge. This is a composite of screen shots taken from color film at hydroplanehistory.com. (Courtesy of Leslie Field)NOW: Brad Haskin, director of the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum in Kent, stands on the lakefront six houses south of the Mercer Island floating bridge where, during the 1954 Gold Cup, the Detroit-based Gale IV hydroplane landed in the lakefront garden of Dr. Forest Black. Black died in 1960. In later decades until 2024, the property and its home were owned by the Oberto family. The site will be featured Dec. 5 at the 39th Mount Baker Home Tour. (Clay Eals)
Published in The Seattle Times online on July 30, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Aug. 2, 2026
Can a hydroplane crash a lakeside garden party? It did in 1954
By Clay Eals
Race day at Seafair. The year’s biggest event. No Mariners, Seahawks or Sonics yet.
THEN: During the Gold Cup on Aug. 7, 1954, onlookers surround the Detroit-based Gale IV hydroplane after driver “Wild Bill” Cantrell beached it in the lakeside garden of Dr. Forest Black six houses south of the Mercer Island floating bridge. This is a composite of screen shots taken from color film at hydroplanehistory.com. (Courtesy of Leslie Field)
Lining Lake Washington’s southwestern shore and the Mercer Island floating bridge are (no typo) 375,000 hydroplane fans. A motorized thrum pierces the air. The second heat of the Gold Cup opens. At a lakefront garden party only six houses south of the bridge, guests mingle, when …
THEN: During the Gold Cup on Aug. 7, 1954, onlookers surround the Detroit-based Gale IV hydroplane after driver “Wild Bill” Cantrell beached it in the lakeside garden of Dr. Forest Black six houses south of the Mercer Island floating bridge. This is a composite of screen shots taken from color film at hydroplanehistory.com. (Courtesy of Leslie Field)
A 2.4-ton, 29-foot-long mahogany-and-yellow hydroplane roars off course, leaps from the water, jumps a bulkhead, brushes through roses and lands just shy of a lily pond and table of snacks.
It actually happened, shortly after 3 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 7, 1954.
THEN: During the Gold Cup on Aug. 7, 1954, onlookers surround the Detroit-based Gale IV hydroplane as driver “Wild Bill” Cantrell climbs out after he beached the boat in the lakeside garden of Dr. Forest Black six houses south of the Mercer Island floating bridge. This is a composite of screen shots taken from color film at hydroplanehistory.com. (Courtesy of Leslie Field)
No one was hurt. The petal-draped, Detroit-based Gale IV suffered an eight-inch hull puncture. Its helmeted driver gingerly climbed out. Onlookers gawked. Two police officers arrived. Cameras clicked and whirred. On the lake, other boats’ roostertails kept rising. The race persisted.
From such front-page incidents legends arise.
THEN4: Driver “Wild Bill” Cantrell atop the Gale IV hydroplane in 1954 in Detroit. (Sandy Ross Collection, courtesy of Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum)
Champion boat and auto racer Bill Cantrell (1908-1996) had earned a nickname in 1927 when an outboard owner saw him driving full throttle and shouted, “Look at Wild Bill go!” But his 1954 mishap came to both fit and haunt him. For years, Cantrell’s answer to “why” was that his steering mechanism had jammed.
Today, Brad Haskin, director of the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum in Kent, reveals a different angle, rooted in rivalry “every bit as hateful as Lakers-Celtics or Yankees-Red Sox.”
THEN: The famous “flying” start of Seattle-based Slo-Mo-Shun hydroplanes. (Screen shot courtesy of Leslie Field)
Automotive Detroit and aerospace Seattle dueled fiercely, through each year’s race outcome, to host the following year’s Gold Cup. Seattle’s Slo-Mo-Shun hydros, based at Stan Sayres’ home at Hunts Point on the northeastern lakeshore, typically zoomed south at up to 130 mph beneath the bridge for the races’ famous “flying” starts. Course-bound Detroit boats could muster only 80-90 mph before the starting line, Haskin says. “The Detroit guys felt that was unfair.”
So Cantrell “rooted around the north turn, trying to create waves” to slow the Slo-Mos. “I have a feeling that while roughing up the water, he got distracted and wasn’t looking where he was going … then boom — he went up and over the rocks and into the garden.”
In one yarn, the homeowner, Dr. Forest Black, asked Cantrell if he had an invitation. In another, the doc offered him a cocktail.
THEN: Navy barge picks up Gale IV. (Courtesy of Leslie Fields)
Seattle’s Slo-Mo-Shun V won that Gold Cup. A Navy barge picked up Gale IV for repairs. The Coast Guard later tightened course boundaries. A beached hydroplane is no longer likely.
But we can delight in Cantrell’s sheepish shrug: “First time I ever walked away from a boat crackup.”
The legend lives.
WEB EXTRAS
Big thanks to Scott Lindsay, Casey McNerthney, Brad Haskin, Betsy Kerlin Pyun and Leslie Field for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos while hearing this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
THEN: The Gale hydroplane team is shown in 1960: from left, driver “Wild Bill” Cantrell, owner Joe Schoenith and son/driver Lee Schoenith. Joe wears a jacket embroidered with the cartoon Reddy Kilowatt, symbol of the Detroit-based W.D. Gale Electric Co. A stick figure of lightning bolts and a lightbulb nose, the mascot also was painted on the tailfins of the firm’s Gale IV and Gale V hydroplanes. (Courtesy of Detroit Historical Society)THEN: A Navy blimp flies overhead during the 1954 Gold Cup race, while in the foreground two police officers preside as a camera crew documents the beached Gale IV hydroplane. (Courtesy of Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum)THEN6: An aerial view of the beached Gale IV hydroplane in the lakefront garden of Dr. Forest Black. (Courtesy of Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum)THEN7: Petal-draped Gale IV rests in Dr. Forest Black’s lakefront rose garden six houses south of the Mercer Island floating bridge. (Courtesy of Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum)Nov. 30, 1914, Seattle Times, p1.Sept. 2, 1915, Seattle Times, p2.June 25, 1933, Seattle Times, p1.Jan. 18, 1936, Seattle Times, p2.April 26, 1942, Seattle Times, p25.Aug. 5, 1954, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p24.Aug. 8, 1954, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p58.Aug. 8, 1954, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p93.Aug. 8, 1954, Seattle Times, p1.Aug. 8, 1954, Seattle Times, p1.Aug. 8, 1954, Seattle Times, p15.Aug. 8, 1954, Seattle Times, p38.Aug. 3, 1956, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p11.June 6, 1960, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p10.June 24, 1960, Seattle Times, p23.Jan. 25, 1996, Louisville Courier-Journal.July 4, 1999, Seattle Times, p126, Don Duncan.Aug. 7, 1999, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p50.July 23, 2000, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p217.Aug. 4, 2001, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p2.Aug. 6, 2005, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, p27.
