BEST LAID PLANS
300mph is fast. In an aeroplane, it could be described as quite mundane. In a car, it’s a speed few get to experience, but in a boat? The fact that only one man has exceeded this speed, and lived, tells you all you need to know. Ken Warby set his world water speed record in 1978, peaking at 345mph, and averaging 317.59mph, and this in a wooden boat, with a jet engine, hand built by Warby in his back garden.
But in 1948, some 30 years earlier, two men were looking at exceeding 250mph, and secretly hoping for 300mph, in a boat built of wood, and powered by a jet engine.
The duo of John Rhodes Cobb, a wealthy fur broker, and Reid Anthony Railton had been cemented by none other than John Godfrey Parry Thomas. Railton had learnt much at the side of the innovative Welshman, and when Thomas moved to Brooklands to engage in the development of his Leyland Eight car, and ultimately the land speed record in his 27-litre Babs, Railton followed. It was at Brooklands the friendship between Cobb and Railton was founded. Cobb became Thomas’ unofficial backer, in exchange for the odd race in Babs, and on the death of Thomas at Pendine Sands in 1927, it fell to Cobb and Railton to continue the pursuit of speed.
By 1948, John Cobb already held the land speed record of 394.2mph in a revolutionary twin aero-engined
