The first casualty in pursuit of the record was perhaps the ironically named Englishman Sir Henry Seagrave, who in 1930 set the world record at 99 mph (159 kph).
Traveling across a lake in Northern Italy, the boat was going fast at 190 mph (306 kph) , but ultimately became unstable and the pilots lost control of it.
An Englishman named John Cobb wanted to be the first person to break the 200 mph (320 kph) speed barrier and built a jet-powered boat called Crusader to do it.