Ernest Hemingway's Pilar

Reading about Ernest Hemingway's 1934 38' Wheeler Playmate named Pilar, it had a 75 hp Chrysler Crown engine and a reported speed of 16 knots. Can this be correct? I have a hard time believing a well made 38 foot wooden fishing boat with a 75 hp inboard engine will do 16 knots. I think the boat is really great but 75 hp and 16 knots? The modern replica version of this boat has twin 370 hp diesels which is about ten times the hp as Ernest Hemingway's boat and is said to cruise at 23 mph or about 20 knots. Can anyone shed some light on this subject?

I want a 38' boat with a 75hp engine that does 16 knots. Oh, and his boat has a 12' beam.

 

If you google "Boat speed calculator", you can input a few specs and it will give you your answer. It uses naval architect, George Crouches formular to calculate the speed. You will need displacement, hp and pick the hull type from a drop down menu. You can also use it backwards to find the hp required to achieve your 16 knots. You will have to do the conversion as i believe it uses mph. You do not need length as that is accounted for in the number it gives for the hull type.

 

I just looked it up and the displacement for the new version is 20600lbs which they claim to be an exact replica, so it looks like it would take more like 300hp to achieve 18mph. 75 hp would get you 9mph which i think confirms your suspicions.

 

Please take the "exact replica" statement with a grain of salt. The original was a round bottomed semi-displacement craft, the replica is a hard chined planing boat. The displacement of the original is a big unknown, Wheeler lost all documentation in a fire, their figure is based on the surviving advertising brochures. Pilar was modified from the beginning and suffered additional modifications in her lifetime, she isn't a stock Wheeler 38.
Anyway, it seems that surviving "normal" Wheeler 38's are capable of around 12kn on their original engines. I have no ideea if Pilar was actually capable of 16kn or if that's just a tale based on daiquiri and a 30's era mechanical knotmeter with less then stellar calibration, but anything is possible on a good day with a tail wind. We simply don't know the actual boat displacement in typical running conditions or the actual horsepower it's engine produced.

 

Having spent time in bars where boating folk gather, I can confidently state that the propensity for exaggeration by said folk is not confined to the size of the catch. Most 50 footers grow by 20' and every boat is capable of at least 20Kn more than the stated maximum speed, some capable of space travel.

 

There's no way the old Pilar weighed 20K. There's a sister ship in Islamorada at Bass Pro Shops, and she isn't that heavy. Per Hemingway's request, Pilar came with twin engines from Wheeler - don't know the make, but 6 cylinder Chryslers would seem likely. By WWII, they had likely been replaced anyway. Stuff didn't last long in Key West back then. But for about $6, you can probably find out. Hemingways Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934 - 1961 Paul Hendri 9781400041626 | eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/386826550472?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28

 

The original Pilar did come with two engines but one of them was a smaller 4 cylinder trolling motor. Pilar had a single six cylinder propulsion engine said to be a 75 hp Chrysler with a propeller shaft exiting through the keel. The trolling motor was off center with the shaft exiting through the bottom of the boat.