Another man's take on Huckins...

Just sharing is all....

As originally built the Huckins boats were a bit faster for the installed power due to the rather flat(low deadrise) bottom and Frank's fanatical concern with eliminating excess weight. The designs are stark to reduce weight.

In 1988, a couple of years before he died, Lindsay Lord told the story (as he saw it) of the Quadraconic hull. Lindsay was a student of Naval Architecture at MIT in the 1920's, prohibition years. The head of the NA department was Professor George Owen (famous for racing sailboats of the day) who could not openly accept design commissions for "Fast Freight" vessels. He could pass those commissions (though not the fee) to his graduate student Lindsay, "for experience". So Lindsay developed some lighter, and wider (for increased load carrying) forms of fast powerboats. When Frank Huckins learned about these successful rum-runners, he came to Professor Owen and again Lindsay got the job for experience(no money). He "worked out the lines using elements of two adjoining cones per side to make a developed surface. Frank Huckins, a master wordsmith, was watching at my side when I illustrated this conic method. "Four cones: Doc, do you realize we have the Quadraconic hull." Thus the name he made famous was coined. I also worked out a formula whereby the offsets could be scaled up or down in proportion to more or less length."

Frank Huckins went on to claim the design was his own, which I gather was not unusual for him. Lindsay got nothing and in a few short years Ray Hunt, Jim Wynne, and Sonny Levi would make it all academic.....though Frank never gave up on "his" Quadraconic name and the company continued to push it well into the 70's and 80's.......