Jet Boaters Bill Austin and Guy Mannering
Uprun the Last Rapid

The Colorado River community membership is down by two due to the recent loss of boatmen from the 1960 Grand Canyon jet boat trip. New Zealander Guy Mannering died August 7 and American Bill Austin on September 2, 2003. Although we remember them for their participation in the only successful uprun of the Colorado River through Grand Canyon, both men also led full lives in many other ventures and adventures.
Born in Kentucky on September 26, 1927, William Thomas “Bill” Austin was a “key player in the exploration of the Flint-Mammoth Cave System, the founding of the Cave Research Foundation (crf), the engineering of Antarctic research stations, and in commerce in the Kentucky Cave Region,” wrote Phil Smith. Smith, who sought out Austin for caving in 1952, added, “Bill avidly photographed crf’s exploratory and scientific ventures. His photography expertise was never more superbly evident than [what] he did for an early action archaeology project.”
At the same time, Smith’s work on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica, as part of the International Geophysical Year (igy), needed engineers, so he and Bill “spent the 1957–58 austral summer together in a small remote field camp on the ice shelf. Later, in the 1960s, Bill was the chief engineer for the U.S. Antarctic Research Program, where he designed several research stations including a station at the South Pole consisting of several laboratory and living buildings beneath a geodesic dome. The new station replaced the one constructed in 1955–56 for the igy. Pole Station and Palmer Station, also designed by Bill, have been continuously occupied since.
It was in 1957 that they “discussed the idea of making a trip up the Colorado. …The inspiration for the idea came from Beyond the Hundredth Meridian…and from [their] having become acquainted with a new water turbine jet boat being perfected by C. W. F. Hamilton Ltd. of Christchurch, nz. …Bill Austin deserves central credit for masterminding the Grand Canyon uprun expedition, a feat that has never been repeated. …The first of two major accidents occurred at Lava Falls [when] Bill suffered a compound fracture of his left lower leg.”
On Thursday, June 23rd, 1960 Joyce Hamilton wrote in her diary: “The boats would have to approach the rapid in exactly the right spot to follow down the tongue on the point of the ridge to avoid being sucked in the Scylla and Charybdis which lay in waiting, one on each side. …We heard some sickening thuds above the roar of the river, and then, after an unbearably long silence, shouts from the cliff-top—Garth, Phil and Jim tearing down the trail. ‘Bill’s broken his leg.’ …Margie standing on the rocks a few feet above the rapid had witnessed the whole drama and had given the alarm to the cameramen on the cliff above. Big Red slid off the tongue to the right, hitting the corner of the great curling wave which tossed that 24-foot, two ton boat clear into the air, and flung it aside into a turbulent area among some rocks.” Smith left on an Air Force helicopter with Austin, “intent on getting him to a hospital and good medical care in Las Vegas. …In the end, neither Bill nor I was in on the finish of the grand adventure that we had hatched up three years earlier in Antarctica. We talked about another trip, but it was not to be.”
Smith concludes: “Bill’s legendary roles in caving, Grand Canyon exploration, Antarctica, and in his work as a businessman in Kentucky have inspired several successive generations of players in all these diverse realms. He set high and exacting standards for himself, and others. …Once you became Bill’s friend, he was a devoted and fierce advocate of your interests.”
Guy M. Mannering, son of the legendary mountaineer George Edward Mannering, was the Christchurch, New Zealand photographer on the 1960 jet boat round trip. Guy was 78 at the time of his death.

With a partner, he operated Mannering and Donaldson, a highly successful photographic business. Guy published several photography books with his own photographs and those of others. In 1962–63 and again in 1964, he made trips to Antarctica to document the New Zealand Antarctic Research Program, resulting in a splendid book, South: Man and Nature in Antarctica, a New Zealand View (Text by Graham Billing, edited and illustrated by Guy Mannering). Later in the ’60s he did a delightful book, Katie, about a five-year old girl’s summer on a sheep station. More recently he published The Hermitage Years of Mannering & Dixon, The Peaks & Passes of J. R. D., and The Seas Between.
Phil Smith mentioned in his remarks at the 2003 gts and in a recent correspondence that “the Mannerings were very hospitable to those of us involved in the U. S. Antarctic Research Program. I spent dozens of nights in their home. In fact, I saw Sputnik for the first time when at their house. It was a memorable evening—the Mannerings were hosting a party for a large number of Yank and Kiwi polar types, mountaineers, and jet boaters. As it was early spring (Oct. 1957) in New Zealand, the Mannerings had a fire in their fireplace—at the appointed time we all went outside, at first having a hard time distinguishing Sputnik from sparks coming out the chimney (poor observations aided by Scotch), but then we spotted Sputnik.”
Besides filming the jet boat run, Guy was one of the main boatmen. He and Jon Hamilton commented on the American variant hull that “after driving ‘Wee Red’ and ‘Wee Yellow’ through the Colorado River that although they were bigger, heavier, and more powerful, they also were ‘clumsier and less responsive.’” Guy was also instrumental in other ways. With encouragement and promotion to his friend Bill Hamilton, Jon’s father, Hamilton formed W. F. Hamilton Marine Ltd. to manufacture jet units commercially. It’s a good thing Guy was filming that trip. As he and Bill Belknap waited their turn in the Wee Red at the bottom of Grapevine Rapid, they watched the Wee Yellow nose-dive into a hole half way up. “And to the bottom of the river along with the Wee Yellow went all their tools, the fiberglass repair kit, all the film which Jim [Bechtal], as Indiana Gear Works photographer, had exposed on the up-stream trip, including two thousand feet of movie and seventeen rolls of 36 exposure Kodachrome.”
At the last gts, Smith showed a brand new video dub from Jon Hamilton’s vault-copy 16mm movie that Guy filmed and narrated, Grand Canyon Uprun: Jetboats Conquer the Colorado. Throughout his life he was an active outdoorsman, especially a jet boater. Smith commented: “The outings with jet boats and the Hamiltons and the Mannerings convinced me that Jon and Guy should be in the Colorado attempt.”
Grand Canyon River Guides and the boating community wish to extend their condolences to the families and friends of Guy Mannering and Bill Austin on their latest uprun; may it be successful.
Richard QuartaroliNote: Thanks to Phil Smith for the notification and information; his appreciation of Austin can be found in the Autumn 2003 “CRF Newsletter.” The film can be viewed on video. Bill Belknap’s photographs, Joyce Hamilton’s publications, White Water: The Colorado Jet Boat Expedition and Diary Kept during the Upriver Conquest of the Colorado River, June–July, 1960, and the Martin J. Anderson Collection oral history interviews contain more information on this historic river trip. All may be found at nau Cline Library Special Collections and Archives at http://www.nau.edu/library/speccoll/index.html.