"SMOKY" STRATTON - Speedway Trailblazer...

I have a fascination with the pioneer dirt-track riders of the 1920s and 30s, some of whom have featured in previous blog posts, but there are three in particular who have really captured my imagination - Frank Charles, Clem Beckett and "Smoky" Stratton. They all led wildly different lives and were much more than just succesful speedway riders. My interest in Stratton was awakened when I discovered he was killed in a road accident just a few hundred yards from my first home in the Lake District. I then discovered that he was buried in a local cemetry and have continued to research his career and visit his grave ever since.

Spencer Charles Stratton, just after his arrival in the UK in April 1928.

Spencer Charles Stratton was a true speedway pioneer and a real-life motorcycling free-spirit, always searching for a new and exciting challenge. He left his New Zealand homeland in 1923 aged just 19 to go racing in Australia. The following year he sailed half way around the World to the USA to try his luck on the American board tracks and eventually landed in Britain in 1928 to join the speedway revolution and quickly became one of the sports first international superstars. He risked his life racing motorcycles on every type of circuit, grass, board, cinders and even concrete, so how ironic that he was tragically killed in a road accident, driving home from a speedway meeting in rural Northern England.

Born in 1904, Stratton spent his early years on the family sheep farm at Colyton, just outside of Palmerston North, New Zealand. He was a bright kid, did well at school and was training to be a lawyer when the excitement of motorcycle racing lured him away from the bar and onto the grass tracks where he was an instant success. Notable victories included the North Island Grass Track Championships and the 1924 New Zealand Middleweight Championships. At the age of 19 he travelled to Australia to race and was soon bagging trophies, titles and records virtually everywhere he appeared. One Australian newspaper described him as "the most promising rider of the season" and predicted that Stratton "... will be the leading figure in motorcycling ... next season."

On 7th May 1924, he left Sydney aboard the SS Ventura arriving in San Francisco on May 26th. The challenge? To try his luck on the infamous board tracks of the USA. I have not discovered how he fared on his first visit to the USA, but he was back in Australia by August 1925, winning the 15mile Championship of Queensland and set 6 World Records over 1 mile, 3 miles and 5miles at Brisbane on August 24th using both his 350cc and 1000cc Indian motorcycles. Stratton was also quite an exponent riding his Indians on the fabulous 1 mile banked concrete Olympia Motor Speedway at Maroubra, in Australia.

The infamous Maroubra Speedway in New South Wales, known locally as the "Killer Track".

Following this second succesful spell in Australia, Stratton returned to the USA in 1926 as a member of the Indian Works team and recorded some notable performances on the Altoona, Rockingham, and Fresno Board Tracks. He returned down under before the year was out and it was reported in the Canberra Times dated 2nd December 1926 that "... Speeding Stratton registered 95mph on his Indian across the Bredabane Plains". Always pushing himself and his bikes to the limit, Stratton survived an horrific crash at the Hamilton Speedway in Newcastle, NSW, promoted incidentally by another New Zealander, the legendary Johnnie Hoskins. He remained unconcious for 23 days but eventually recovered, got right back on his bike and continued to set records and win titles at tracks in both Australia and on the 1 mile grass tracks in his homeland.

Dirt-track racing (soon to be re-christened Speedway) had arrived in the UK amid a blaze of publicity in 1928 and a flood of Aussie riders made their way to Britain to try and earn their fame and fortune. Smoky was amongst the first to join the exodus, joining promoter Johnnie Hoskins aboard the SS Oronsay as it set sail from Sydney bound for Southampton, arriving here in April 1928.

350cc Indian single, similar to the one used by Smoky Stratton

Smoky loved his 1000cc V-Twin Indian Daytona

At this stage of his career Stratton had been exclusively racing two Indian motorcycles, a 350cc single and a 990cc Daytona Indian Chief, but he switched to riding the famous dirt-track Douglas bikes when he rode in the UK. He was one of the first real "Broadsliders" to appear on the British tracks and his name adorned the billboards all over the country -  from Stamford Bridge in London to Marine Gardens in Scotland - "Smoky" Stratton as he was now known, really was thrilling the millions. Like many of the Aussie stars though, Stratton never really got to grips with the tighter tracks in the UK and he soon spread his wings onto the continent where he also ran his own track in Cologne in front of crowds in excess of 75.000!

Smoky aboard his Douglas in 1929

Motorcycle historian Cyril May described the spectacular German venue in an article in the Speedway Star and News dated 17/12/1967. "Stratton's track gave a lap of 400 yards and was built immediately inside a concrete cycle racing track. The cycle track was banked almost vertically on the bends and on top of this banking, the front rows of spectators stood and looked down. ... Quite a lot of trouble was experienced in the matter of obtaining a permit from the police, who then controlled everything in Germany. Two weeks elapsed before they would give permission for a private demonstration and when some of the boys were at last allowed to put it over, the police ran for cover! It was only when things had been going on smooothly for about ten minutes, free from any slaughter, that they could be induced to spectate. In the end they were all for it."

Stratton had also became a partner in Provincial Dirt Tracks Ltd, the company that built the Owlerton Speedway Stadium at Sheffield in the UK and the White City Speedway at Cardiff in Wales. His partners included fellow riders Clem Beckett and Jimmy Hindle and a businessman named Edgar Hart. Even though his weatlth and business portfolio were starting to grow, Smoky still had a thirst for speed and danger and continued to race all over the World, never settling in one place for too long and always looking for the next big challenge. As well as being part owner of Sheffield, he also rode for the Yorkshire team in the 1929 English Dirt Track League and competed in the beach races at New Brighton near Liverpool. At the end of the British season he returned to the USA where, reunited with his beloved Indians, he continued his excellent form racing on the board tracks.

Another portrait of Smoky on his Douglas. This looks like the pits area at Sheffield.

Back in the UK in 1930 he joined the Nottingham speedway team and by December of that year he had returned to Australia where he set another World speed record at the Ashfield Autodrome, covering a quarter mile in 17.8 seconds. He returned to the UK again in March 1931 and signed for the Plymouth speedway team. I also know that he rode in Vienna, Austria on September 1st 1932 and in 1933 he made a brief visit to his home in New Zealand. Interestingly, despite the fact that he raced motorcycles all over the World,  I have found no records of Smoky ever riding on a New Zealand Speedway track at any time in his career.

"Smoky" eventually found his way back to the UK and teamed up with his old pal Johnnie Hoskins once again. In 1938, Hoskins reopened the track at Brough Park, Newcastle Upon Tyne and appointed Stratton as his manager. The Newcastle squad included eight Canadian riders at the time and also featured Roland and Maurice Stobbart from Cumberland. Roland was also promoting speedway at the Lonsdale Park track in Workington and had invited some of the Canadian riders to participate in a challenge match at the non-league venue on June 4th 1938. "Smoky" came along as team manager for the night and also acted as driver for the three Canadians, but on the journey home, driving along the Workington to Cockermouth Road, their car was involved in a head on collision with another car near to the village of Brigham.

Stratton was killed instantly, he was only 33 years old. The three Canadian riders, Bruce Venier, Ellwood Stilwell and Robert Sparks all suffered head and facial injuries, as did the occupants of the other car, driver John Roan of Cockermouth and his passenger, George Smith of Whitehaven. Ironically, another Canadian rider was also injured in a car accident that very night. George Pepper, the Newcastle captain, had turned down the chance of riding at Workington as he was due to ride at Edinburgh on the same night. He was involved in a head on collision on his way to Edinburgh and suffered cuts to his leg. The meeting he was due to race in was subsequently cancelled.

Maurice Stobbart had the sad task of identifying Smoky's body at the inquest, which was led by Inspector Woolcock. As "Smoky" had no family living in the UK, it was decided to bury him locally at the cemetry in Cockermouth.

The Inspector and one of his officers escorted the funeral courtege out of town and along the Lorton Road to the cemetry. The whole population of Cockermouth lined the streets to pay their last respects to this great sporting legend. Riders, officials and supporters from the Newcastle and Workington speedway tracks attended the funeral, along with Mr Ivison, the secretary of the Speedway Control Board, Jimmy Fraser, director of the Edinburgh Speedway and his great friend Johnnie Hoskins was there too. Hoskins played a big part in Smoky's life and it was only fitting that he should be there at the end too. Hoskins also had a gravestone erected to commemorate his freind and colleague.

Whenever I visit Smoky's grave I am always pleased to see fresh flowers laid there, but my inquisitive mind wanted to know who put them there as he had no family in the UK to my knowledge. Questions in the newspapers, on the internet and through the speedway fraternity had led nowhere, but a chance remark by Johnnie Hoskins in a 1967 edition of the Speedway Star and News gave me a clue. Hoskins said... "I still often think of Smoky when he was with me at my Newcastle track in Australia, riding the big Indians in the mid twenties and also of his exploits on the big concrete track of Marouba. Neither have I  forgotten those two devoted speedway supporters that corresponded with me for quite a time after the Stratton tradgedy ... they were the ones who so kindly tended 'Smoky's' grave in the little town of Cockermouth"

Then. out of the blue, I received a reply to a note I had left at Smoky's grave, which gave me all of the answers. Inspector Woodcock, the man who had led the inquest and escorted Smoky's coffin to the cemetry, was a speedway fan from the Workington track. His young daughter was also a big speedway fan and felt so sorry for Smoky being buried so far away from his family and homeland that she promised to care and tend to his grave. Both of them wrote to Johnnie Hoskins and thro him they traced his family in New Zealand and began to correspond with them too - This young lady kept her promise and laid flowers at the grave every weekend until she passed away herself a few years ago and now her daughter and grandaughter are carrying on the tradition.

Johnnie Hoskins paid for a headtone to be erected on Smoky's grave. Fresh flowers are placed there every week.
The inscription reads...

TO THE MEMORY OF
SPENCER CHARLES STRATTON
SPEEDWAY RIDER
FROM NEW ZEALAND
WHO WAS KILLED AT BRIGHAM
4th JUNE 1938 AGED 33 YEARS

So Spencer Charles Stratton is not alone and I too will continue my little pilgrmage to the quiet, lonely grave of "Smoky" Stratton and pay my respects to a true motorcycling Trailblazer.

Harry Hawker - Racing the Boards...

I've just finished reading an excellent biography of Harry Hawker, the famous Australian aviator who flew the Atlantic in 1919 and was also the co-founder of the Hawker Aircraft company. He had moved to England in 1911 and ended up working for the Sopwith Aviation Company who were based at Brooklands. Inevitably, with some spare time on his hands he also raced cars and motorcycles around the legendary banked track.

Like so many people obsessed with machines and speed, Harry also had a love of motorcycles and built two of his own in a small workshop in Melbourne. His  favourite project was a high-powered motorcycle which used a v-twin engine that Harry built himself in 1909. The design was based on the British J.A.P v-twin engine with a few Hawker modifications. I was interested to read that Harry raced this bike on a board track in Australia, just like the great board tracks of America at the time. The biography says that...

"Harry raced against his friends Harry Busteed and Cecil De Faga who also built their own machines. Busteed's machine had enormous cyclinders but used a simpler side valve design. They raced on a steeply banked wooden track which was built for racing pedal cycles... The track was only an eighth of a mile and the high powered motorcycles soon started to shake the wooden structure to pieces"

They were eventually barred from using this track and took to racing on the country roads around Melbourne instead. Here's a few photographs of Harry Hawker and his friends with their homemade racing motorcycles at the Princes Park track, Melbourne, Australia.

Harry Hawker and Cecil De Fraga racing on the Princes Park board track in 1910 (Bob Chamerlain)

Cecil de Fraga with his v-twin Bouchet at Princes Park in 1909 (Bob Chamberlain)

Harry Busteed with his home made racing motorcycle. The engine was so large that Harry had to sit over the rear wheel and use long handlebars (Bob Chamberlain)

Information and photographs taken from "Hawker" A Biography of Harry Hawker by L.K.Blackmore. Published in 1990 by Airline Publishing Ltd. ISBN 185310437X.

Click the link for more information about the fascinating life and times of Harry Hawker.

Hmmm... Looks familiar?

Whilst looking at the UHL Studios artwork I found this excellent painting of a 1920s board-track racer taking a break and thought the image looked familiar. Then I remembered this image from one of my earlier posts on board-track racers. It is from John Proud's Legtrailer Art website... I wonder which one came first?

CYCLONE- 1913-1916.

The Cyclone is probably one of the most purposeful bikes of all time and was certainly way ahead of its time in terms of engine build and performance. The bike was built by Joerns Motor Manufacturing Company of St Paul, Minnesota, USA, which itself grew out of the Thiem Manufacturing Company, an engine builder which operated from 1903 to 1911. Board-track and dirt-track motorcycle racing were big money earners in America during the early 20th century with Indian and Harley-Davidson leading the way and then Cyclone came onto the scene in 1912 with their 1000cc, over-head cam v-twin.

The bevel drive ohc engine was designed by Swedish engineer, Andrew Strand, and was possibly the most powerful motorcycle engine of the day. The motors ran very well and were very strong but the frame was really nothing more than a modified bicycle frame with an unpadded leather saddle and even bicycle pedals.

While racing a Cyclone in 1914, development engineer J.A.McNeil set a new speed record of 111 mph, beating the Excelsior of Lee Hummiston at 100mph (yes this was 1914!). The quality of the workmanship was very high in most regards, as the motors were machined to very high accuracy. Ultimately, the motors and the bikes were not as reliable as more conventional designs. Some races were lost due to mundane issues like cracked fuel tanks or broken chains, but some were lost due to exhaust valve and piston breakages.

J.A.McNeil on a Cyclone

Racing is what Cyclones did best, and the name most closely associated with them after that of designer Andrew Strand is Don Johns, perhaps the most successful of all Cyclone riders. In a 1941 magazine interview, Johns recalled some things about the legendary Cyclone... "The yellow rig attracted a great deal of attention wherever I raced it. It used special Swedish precision bearings and was very light and very powerful. The motor was so powerful that I would wear out a set of tires in just a few laps. I switched from U.S. Tires to a newly designed Goodyear and that helped. It was the first racer to turn over 5000 rpms. It had a unique sound and was often five to seven miles per hour faster than the other factory rigs."

Don Johns on his Cyclone

One legendary victory for Johns on the Cyclone was a winner-take-all one-lap race around a mile dirt track in Phoenix on November 18, 1913. The promoter offered the princely sum of $1000 to the vehicle that could lap the mile the fastest – that included planes flying just above the mile oval. Johns and the Cyclone beat the automobile ace Barney Oldfield and barnstorming pilot Lincoln Beachly to win the prize.

The Cyclone, while often the fastest motorcycle at a race, suffered from reliability problems. Johns easily turned the fastest lap times and many times built big leads only to suffer mechanical problems with the bike. The most infamous race for Johns and Cyclone was the epic 1915 Dodge City 300. A total of seven manufacturers fielded factory teams in the event. Harley-Davidson, debuting in the classic race, and Indian each had eight riders. Johns, on the Cyclone, turned laps over two mph faster than Dave Kinney’s qualifying speed in the early laps and was heavily favoured to win the race. He opened a large lead, lapping a number of riders in the first fifty miles. Then the bike began to fade and he lost the lead just before the 100-mile mark and later dropped out of the running. Johns also lead similarly in the 100-mile national at Ascot Park until the Cyclone again failed before reaching the chequered flag. Johns did win a number of shorter races on the Cyclone, including the 1 mile FAM National held in Sacramento in July of 1915.

The company owners of Cyclone had little experience or even interest in marketing, building up dealerships or service, production was slow and expensive, profits were minimal, so the owners eventually stopped production in 1915 after no more than 300 Cyclones had been built. A number of ttempts were made to revive the Cyclone. Firstly, in 1916, a Chicago businessman bought the assets and moved the machinery, partially completed bikes and all the remaining parts to Chicago, where they were stored in a warehouse. Two other investors got involved, but were unable to get the business up and running. Four years later, the left-overs were sold and moved to Cheboygan, Michigan, where a building was put up and production was set to resume. This never happened either and another move to Benton Harbor, Michigan was made. Another factory was prepared and Andrew Strand was brought in to update the design. A new Cyclone with a three-speed transmission (reportedly based on an Excelsior unit) was displayed and adverts appeared in motorcycling magazines. Again, nothing came of it. The Cyclone's last gasp came in 1923. A racer called the Reading-Standard competed in several races. As it turned out, this was a Cyclone bearing a different name on its tank. Reading-Standard (itself recently purchased by the Cleveland Motor Company), had acquired all remaining Cyclone assets and put together one last racer from left-over parts.

A painting of a 1916 Cyclone by Don Bradley

Engine: 45degree OHC V-Twin 

Capacity: 1000cc

Horsepower: 45bhp

Wheelbase: 53" (135cm)

Weight: 260lbs (118kg)

Top Speed: 110mph (177kph)

Cost: $350

BOARD RACERS IN ART & POETRY!

Yeah, I'm getting all cultural tonight... Digging through my box of old photos and news-cuttings I found a booklet of poetry titled "An Epic Dirt Track Tale" by former Berwick speedway rider Ian Paterson. (Ian also has one of the best collections of vintage dirt track, ice racing and speedway bikes in the world, but that's a story for another day). The poems trace the history of the sport in the UK and also give Ian the chance to voice his own views on the authorities and totally bonkers rules! One of the poems is an ode to the American Board Racers of the 1920s that I'm so fond of and goes like this...

In Yankee Land, it's understood

That "Uncle Sam" built tracks of wood

With bends banked steeply to the sky

These board racers could really fly

On Cyclone's, Thor's and Indian's

(1000 cubes of big vee-twin)

These crazy bastards got their fun

When lapping board tracks at the ton!

They raced on mile or half-mile tracks

Bends high enough for steeplejacks.

Too many deaths in competition

Brought about their abolition.

And keeping with the arty theme, here's another fabulous illustration from the Leg Trailer Art of John Proud

MORE VINTAGE BOARD TRACK RACERS>>>>

I've really got a "thing" for these old time board track racers. Apparently it all started with the pacer motorcycles that led in cycle races on the board tracks. Then some bright spark came up with the idea of racing the motorcycles themselves. The bikes got lighter and faster, the tracks got bigger and the danger got higher and higher. Take a look at some of these photos for more pure nostalgia

This is how it all started. Large capacity pacer motorcycles on the cycle board tracks.

AMERICAN BOARD RACING

Harley-Davidson Factory Team

Mory Graves leading at Springfield

Otto Walker

This has got to be one of the most extreme forms of motorcycle racing ever. Riding stripped down and highly tuned bikes like Cyclone, Flying Merkel, ACE,  Harley-Davidson, Excelsior and Indian, these all-American heroes raced around banked oval circuits constructed from wooden boards - a bit like a gigantic, highspeed wall of death (literally). Board racing was immensley popular up until the 1920s. It was also very brutal and fatalities were high amongst riders and spectators!

One of the early stars was Eddie Hasha who set a 1 mile record of 95mph at the Playa Del Rey circuit near Los Angeles on May 1st 1912. Over the years, the sport began to get a bad reputation, not just because of the casualties but also illegal gambling, the consumption and selling of "moonshine" and even prostitution too!!Edde Hasha himself eventually became a victim of the sport that made him famous, He was killed in 1921 at the Newark track in New Jersey when he and a few other riders flew all off the banking killing themselves and a number of spectators too... Brutal and frightening it may have been but I just wish I could have witnessed this spectacle for myself.

If you want to see more amazing photos and read about the history of these crazy adrenaline junkies take a look at http://statnekov.com/motorcycles/index.html Highly recommended!