Today's outboard motors can be massive.

These modern behemoths, however, are a far cry from the early engines that were ordinarily only put on a boat prior to use and then taken off again when boating was done.

And a lot of work was extracted out of just a few horsepower.

Eighty-two years ago, the Transcontinental, to avoid heavy seas, put into Leland for an unplanned stop. Its epic 5,000-mile trip, which we might today call a “publicity stunt,” began in Astoria, Ore., and took three men and a dog all the way to the East Coast. Rivers and lakes were navigated throughout, although at least one major “portage” was required when the boat was shipped from the Columbia River to Fort Benton, Mont., on the Missouri River.

They made the trip in an 18-foot boat powered by an outboard motor – a four-horsepower Evinrude.

One man stayed with the boat overnight during its Leelanau stay, but the other two were “guests at the Riverside Inn.” All three resumed their pioneering journey east beginning at 8 a.m. the following day.

Ole Evinrude (1877-1934) is credited with inventing the outboard motor (in 1909), but, like Henry Ford before him, sold out his interest and later wanted to get back into the business after developing an efficient two-cylinder engine in 1919.

He couldn’t sell “Evinrudes,” so he put an “Elto,” which was often advertised in the Enterprise, on the market. Elto was an acronym for Evinrude Light Twin Outboard.

The new motor had opposed cast iron cylinders, an exposed flywheel with a knob on the top, and a large rudder behind the propeller. The aluminum rudder was hollow, and the propeller’s slipstream forced water into it and up copper tubing to cool the engine.
The knob already alluded to was used to start the engine. One would grasp it and “bump” the flywheel against the engine’s compression.

Sometimes, the engines would “kick” back, which is why they were sometimes referred to as “knucklebusters.”

A few years later, the problem was addressed. A small Johnson opposed “twin,” for example, had a notch in the flywheel so that it could be started with a rope. The same outboard swiveled on its mounting bracket so a rudder wasn’t needed. Since there was no rudder for cooling, an eccentric on the propeller shaft drove a tiny piston-pump.

In a few more years, recoil mechanisms replaced rope starters and impellers built into the lower units of the outboards provided the needed cooling.

These motors were similar to modern outboards and a few are still in use in today.
In the early and mid-1950’s, a “big” outboard produced 25 horsepower. This later evolved into 35, 40, 45 horsepower, and so forth.

The big engines were bolted, rather than clamped, onto the stern of the boat.
But all of this lay in the future on Aug. 22, 1925, when the Transcontinental left Glen Haven at 7:30 a.m., “Bound for Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken.”

The Enterprise, in its edition of Aug. 27, however, reported that it put into Leland at 10 a.m. “when a rising wind and heavy sea sent them to shelter.”

At this point, the three men had already traveled over 200 miles on the Columbia River, 2,300 miles on the Missouri, 350 miles on the Illinois and then through the Chicago Drainage Canal and north on Lake Michigan, which they crossed from Milwaukee to Manistee (escorted by the Coast Guard).

The three men – magazine writer John Hoag, photographer Frank Wilton, and former Navy man Val Woodbury – had left Astoria on May 20. Their exploit didn’t generate as much attention as trans-Atlantic flights such as Charles Lindbergh’s, but it did draw widespread attention as Americans, across the country, followed their progress.

And it doubtless helped to sell numerous outboard motors.