Newton Ancarrow’s beautiful boats / South Richmond News

RVA Hub’s recent piece about the new retro motor boat rentals at Rocketts Landing reminded me that fast and beautiful little boats used to be made here at Ancarrow’s Landing. Known now for the fishing and as part of the Manchester Slave Trail and the Poop Loop trail just across the river from Rocketts Landing, Ancarrow’s Landing takes its name as the former site of Newton Ancarrow’s 1950s/1960s speedboat-manufacturing factory.

The founding of Ancarrow Marine is surrounded in lore that suits the the beauty of the fast &expensive machines themselves:

Popular boating said he wanted to buy a fast boat, and for the seller to guarantee it’s speed. When no guarantees were made to back up the sellers boasts, it was recommended to Newton that he should build one himself if he thought he could do any better. He decided to show them up and did just that.

A New York Times piece on the 1964 National Motor Boat Show gives an indication of just how special Ancarrow’s boats were:

A flash of black … a glint of gold … she’s gone!” reads the brochure—and that’s about it. With 400 horsepower in a Chrysler engine and Latham supercharger, the bullet-shaped Consul does better than 70 miles an hour.

Nothing else built by Ancarrow’s company, Ancarrow Marine, Inc., of Richmond, Va., is that fast. Nor is anything else in the show with the exception of Miss Bardahl, an unlimited hydroplane designed purely for racing.

Ancarrow’s later influential efforts as a pioneering environmental activist are described in Ann Woodlief’s In River Time – The Way of the James, in Harry Kollatz’ True Richmond Stories and “One Against the Current” in Richmond Magazine.