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Jim was already fascinated by steam and decided that flash steam was to be the chosen route, but having taken stock of current practice he came to the conclusion that the reciprocating engines were far too noisy and a small steam turbine might prove significantly quieter and less obtrusive in a boat. After a great deal of research and investigation Jim set to and designed a power unit with a single wheel ‘de laval’ type turbine and a 4:1 reduction gear to cope with the predicted 60,000+ rpm, as well as a boiler and hull to suit.

The result was ‘Hero’ named after Hero of Alexandria who proved the principle of the reaction turbine by building a working model some 2,500 years previously. Using his knowledge of combustion Jim also reasoned that the steam generators (boilers) currently in use were not efficient as they used up to three massive vapourising blowlamps blasting a wall of flame in to the boiler casing.

He came up with a more subtle idea, which became attributed to him by name and with only minor alteration is still the method used on current flash steam hydroplanes. This was the ‘Bamford venturi boiler’. Instead of conventional blowlamps firing in to the open boiler casing he closed the front of the casing and made it into a venturi similar to a gas turbine engine and then had the fuel nipple pumping vapourised fuel into this opening which mixed with vast quantities of air and then burned inside the boiler case. The case was also shaped to allow the flames to expand round the coil before converging back to the exhaust. This was science versus brute force. The hull was hardly conventional either, being built of tin plate and a semi circular cross section with bolted on aluminium ‘ski’ type sponsons.

Diagram of 'Bamford venturi boiler'

Hero I in the 'dustbin' wind tunnel

The continuing problems with the turbine proved too much and so Jim reverted to reciprocating engines for a while and proved the effectiveness of the boiler principle. ‘Hero’ always provided interest and excitement and occasionally would get Jim on to the results list, but the hull was marginal on buoyancy with the extra weight and usually ended up sinking at some stage. By the end of 1953 he was fed up with drying out the power plants and decided to have another look at a turbine but this time using the ‘Stumpf’ type blades. Whilst power might have been questionable, speed wasn’t as the turbine wheel burst on test destroying the whole engine so he promptly set to and built another complete turbine having it ready for its first test just after Christmas 1953. This engine looked more promising and Jim decided that it deserved a newer hull.

The new Hero was designed specifically to avoid excess lift and tendency to flip and instead of semi circular had a Vee cross-section. A wide planning wedge towards the bow and a small wedge at the stern did the business although bowing to pressure he did add sponsons for a while. This hull was made from 1/16^th ply and reinforced to such a stage that Jim could hang his 12 stone from the boat when it was suspended form its bridles as he had "a morbid fear of the boat coming off the line".

The first trial of the new Hero took place in a small pond behind the house and what a trial it turned out to be! With everything at full pressure there was a blinding flash and Jim was dowsed in burning petrol/paraffin vapour. He fled up the bank of the pond followed by the boat "roaring like a jet plane". Realising he was ‘somewhat burned’ he put the fire out, dumped the boat in the shed and drove to the hospital for treatment.

He spent a week in the hospital wondering whether 400 hour of work had been negated, but ‘on escaping’, found that little damage had been done other than to the prop. The cause of all this was a brazed joint in the fuel line that had failed.

Trials soon continued, and for the first few regattas of the 54 season Jim plus safety goggles persevered with the turbine, ‘Hero’s both as John Benson captioned one photograph. Like the previous turbine, however it showed promise but would not run consistently so a conventional engine with piston valves replaced it by mid season.

At the Grand regatta of that year "Hero lapped at high speed throwing water 10ft in to the air but did not complete the run on either attempt."

After four years of unremitting effort Jim Bamford abandoned the turbine as a power unit and concentrated on reciprocating engines from then on. In his own words "while not achieving any success on water had a lot of fun". He was being far too modest, as he had actually achieved a great deal, with the first and only turbine ever to record runs in a tethered hydroplane.

His turbines ran consistently at 95,000+ rpm and reached a top speed of around 55mph with the best official ¼ mile run of 32mph at St Albans in 1954. A lasting legacy is the ‘Bamford venturi boiler’, which in tests he carried out managed to produce steam at around 3000 psi.

 Left: Hero II with vee-twin piston engine

It might be assumed that all the incredible amount of work involved with building the flash steam power plants and hulls would be enough to keep any one person occupied, but amazingly, while all this was going on, Jim also built a series of IC engines and boats which he raced alongside the two versions of Hero. His first was a very conventional scow type hull with additional aluminium ‘ski’ type sponsons. The power unit was a 15cc, single cylinder four stroke that he had built and the boat carried the initials JAB prominently on the bow. Although not numbered this was to be the first of three JAB boats.

Never one to be totally conventional Jim added a front ‘wing’ to the boat to try to counteract the lift produced by the very wide hull. Others were also experimenting with similar devices but quickly they were banned although no modern tethered hydro would run without a rear ‘wing’. JAB (1) was not spectacular, but reliable so the name Bamford appeared on result sheets more regularly than with Hero.

Wanting to be even more competitive a modern two stroke motor was then constructed, modelled on George Lines’ ‘Sparky’ design. A new and smaller scow hull, JAB 2, was built to house the much lighter two stroke, but by this stage the scow really was outdated as a competitive shape which led to Jim’s most distinctive and successful boat of the 50s JAB 3 or ‘Spikey’ as it was known to the family.

Although more successful with IC motors Jim Bamford’s ambition was still to be competitive with a flash steam boat so around 1960 he came up with a completely new boat ‘Beebug’. The hull was now a conventional three point hydro similar to virtually all the IC boats of the period although wider to accommodate the bulk of the steam plant. A vee twin reciprocating engine in the bow drove a conventional skeg mounted prop and three quarters of the boat was boiler.

Not his normal venturi boiler this time but a three burner variation with a parallel casing and unrestricted exhaust. With a more conventional hull, and burners at the stern, most of the previous problems were resolved and soon ‘Beebug’ was running faster and more reliably than either of the ‘Heros’ had ever done.

Beebug set up for a test on a water brake

By 1963 Jim had taken the British ‘A’ class record at 60.4 mph and was proving very difficult to beat. He won the Mears Trophy over 1000yds and the Crebbin Trophy was almost permanently resident in the Bamford household.

‘Beebug’ reigned supreme for much of the 60s but by early in the 70s a new boat was on the cards, but this time less conventional. ‘Inferno’ as the new boat was called, could not be described as pretty as it was an open, vee bottomed, plywood box with two aluminium ‘ski’ type sponsons bolted on the sides and two after sponsons at the rear. A single cylinder engine was placed just inside the transom driving a surface prop on an outrigger, a system that is now universal on every offshore racing powerboat, but first seen on tethered hydro’s 35 years ago.

The boiler was an even stranger affair with a burner and combustion tube almost a foot long before the circular boiler casing that led to a gapingly large exhaust. ‘Inferno’ was well on the way to matching speeds obtained with ‘Beebug’ when Jim gave up racing. Like several others at the time he was not happy with the introduction of piano wire lines instead of flax and his worst fears were realised at Wicksteed Park when JAB 3 broke loose and injured a spectator.

After some 25 years of intense building, experimentation and competition with tethered hydroplanes, interest waned and Jim Bamford hung up his waders. He continued to work with steam but through model engineering, building a steam lorry and a ‘Sweet Pea’ locomotive that he ran on the track at Guildford.

Originally Jim belonged to the Aldershot Club and his boats carried the prestigious AT 1 registration but he later became an integral part of the Kingfisher Club that was formed in the early 70s and created its own pond and facility behind the Old Ford Pub in Aldershot. Sadly Jim did not have too long to enjoy the more relaxed type of steam activity as he died in 1984 aged just 63.

Right: From top Hero II : Hero I : JAB III : JAB II : JAB (I)