He was the famous New Zealander who survived a deadly light plane crash in 1936 and went on to invent the modern jet boat in 1950.
More than 70 years later, and 45 years since his death, Christchurch businessman Sir Bill Hamilton’s name is now more synonymous with Kiwi ingenuity than ever across the world - stretching far beyond his original dream of inventing a boat that could take him up the shallow Canterbury rivers.
Bill Hamilton, inventor of the Hamilton Jet and founder of the world-famous company.
Today, Hamilton Jet - still privately owned by the Hamilton family - is working on waterjet propulsion products and related digital technology used by mariners in some of the world’s most challenging environments.
And they’re also developing dual hybrid propulsion technology - for boats that can be powered by electric motors and batteries or a combination of diesel engines, batteries and even hydrogen-generated electrical power.
“Bill would have been pleasantly surprised, I think, to see where we’ve got to now compared to his first ventures up the braided rivers of the Mackenzie Country,” says Hamilton Jet product engineering manager Phil Rae.
“We’re very excited about it.”
Last year was the biggest for the company in its long, storied history, “by some considerable margin”, says Rae.
Many foreign governments invested in infrastructure in the marine segment to help stimulate their economies following Covid, while there was also growth for offshore wind farm support vessels as part of global de-carbonisation initiatives.
Whereas big companies such as Tesla and Caterpillar have thousands of engineers, Hamilton Jet is relying on a technical team staff of about 70. Of the approximate 450 staff in the business, most are in Christchurch but with regional subsidiaries in Singapore, the United States and England.
“We are doing quite big things, on a shoestring - that’s the Kiwi way,” says Rae.
Hamilton Jet is, by any measure, a huge New Zealand business success story, although there have also been growing pains, in that it has had to cut back staff from the peak of a year ago.
“Most people in New Zealand still associate ourselves with jet boats,” says Rae. “Whereas really 98 per cent of the businesses are manufacturing jet units and control systems and other related digital technology.
“We don’t do the sort of adventure boating that we used to do in the 60s and 70s where the Hamilton family would go off and jet boat all the world’s great rivers for the first time.
“But a lot of those stories, a lot of those videos are still widely watched and circulated. The brand is still strong.”
Rae took the Herald to Lyttelton yesterday to showcase the company’s 15m test boat Aria. Under its deck is a mix of diesel and electric motor technology driving the famous Hamilton jets at the stern.
Inside the cockpit, a mix of screens and technology give mariners pinpoint data and the ability for precision operations.
The company has already developed digital control technology, for example, that can keep a boat planted in one spot such as at the base of an offshore wind turbine or under an oil rig.
Albear Montocchio, left, and Phil Rae from Hamilton Jet on board Aria in Lyttelton Harbour. Photo / George Heard
“Aria is the pride and joy of our fleet,” says Rae. “This is our development test platform for our new technology. This is coming out of our Future Products group. Primarily it’s a hybrid test platform.”
Aria allows Hamilton Jet to showcase to customers the integration of hybrid electric systems, selling the sustainability dream. “We’re decarbonising one boat at a time. That’s our vision.”
Hamilton Jet has three large customer regions - the Americas, Europe/Africa/Middle East and Asia. In other words, most of the world.
It also has three key areas of new technology focus: The hybrid electric propulsion work; advanced vessel and fleet monitoring; and vessel autonomy.
There are two threads to autonomy - one in providing interfaces for unmanned vessels, such as drones searching for mines; the other thread is more advanced.
“We’ve partnered up with an offshore company to develop functionality that provides the skipper a lot more situational awareness,” says Rae.
“It fuses data from various sensors such as radar, GPS, vessel automatic identification systems (AIS) and cameras.
“It tells you which other ships are in the region and provides the skipper a rich picture of the environment they’re operating in.
“It also provides functionality like automatically controlling the boat to do survey arrays and other pre-programmed missions.”
The technology also features collision avoidance.
“The system detects where other boats are, what their speed is, what their heading is and if it looks like [it will collide] it will either steer the boat away or slow it down,” says Rae.
That was especially important “where you’ve got poor visibility or at night, people operating in unfamiliar environments”.
Shayne Currie is travelling the country on the Herald’s Great New Zealand Road Trip. Read the full series here.
The Great NZ Road Trip heads from Christchurch to Greymouth on Friday.
“Or you’ve got some larrikin on a high-speed boat blasting out of the harbour”. It is also important for unmanned autonomous vessels.
The company has come a long way since Bill Hamilton - who survived a small plane crash that killed the pilot in Wellington in 1936 - developed his jet boat in 1950.
But his name and his ingenuity live on.
“It’s still a relatively small business on the world scale, but we’re doing some big things with a relatively small resource,” says Rae.
“We’ve got some really passionate customers around the world and with the successful projects, they just become salespeople for us. It’s a very exciting time in the company’s history.”
