During research into the 1920s hydroplane speed queen Marion ‘Joe’ Carstairs, an eccentric English petrolhead and powerboat racer, naval architect Jack Gifford came upon – and has now secured – a rare and intact Napier Sea Lion engine. Napier was a leading pre-war engine manufacturer whose W12-format Napier Lion, designed in 1917, was for many years the most powerful petrol engine in the world, and powered countless speed records on land, sea and air, for Malcolm Campbell, Supermarine (the engine is the predecessor of the Rolls Royce R, then Merlin, that powered the Spitfire), and others. With its aluminium block, it was the first lightweight engine in the world, its 22.3-litre capacity producing an output of up to 1,375hp, from a weight of under 400kg. The marinised Sea Lion variant…