There is a bit of sport these days finding new names to add to the list of the world's motorcycle manufacturers. I confess to playing it - no problem there as it really is good fun. Otherwise who would believe that there were around 400 different marques in Australia alone? But adding names to the list is one thing, taking them off again is quite another! Let's try to get rid of one of them here. The Duck. It probably ought to be killed off by the simplest of arguments: surely no one could ever name a motorcycle The Duck! But let's be more scientific. How did the name appear? The first time I saw it in print was in Jerry Hatfield's American Racing Motorcycles, where the Duck name appears in the Yale entry, in relation to the transcontinental crossing in 1903. When I met Jerry in 1985, I asked him about this reference to the Duck as the predecessor to the Yale. He was kind enough to supply me with references to his sources. Sure enough there are earlier in-print references to the Duck motorcycle. J.J. O'Conner mentioned it in a 1943 article in The Motorcyclist, and in A Treasury of Motorcycles of the World Floyd Clymer has the Duck manufactured in Stockton California in 1906-08. Neither of these seems supported by documentary evidence, and Jerry now accepts that the Duck has no place in the California/Yale story. By the way, Jerry's 1996 Illustrated Antique American Motorcycle Buyer's Guide is an excellent read. Despite its name, it is really a potted history of American motorcycles from 1900 to 1936. The excellent coverage of the lesser marques makes a pleasant change from most recent publications. It's a pity that Jerry still doesn't get the name of Wyman's machine correct! For the record, the machine was a California. The Yale-California (and the Snell-California if it existed) cannot have appeared before October 1903 when The Consolidated Manufacturing Company was formed and acquired the rights to the California motorcycle. The origin of the Duck name is almost certainly related to the brake fitted to Wyman's transcontinental California, and other production Californias of the day. Here is a lovely illustration of the device, in an advertisement that appeared in The Motorcycle Magazine in July 1903:
The brake itself is a bizarre device with rollers pressing on the tyre, providing a servo effect. A complicated spring attaches the brake to the fork. As well as motorcycle brakes, there were Duck bicycle brakes, some activated by a "palm handle" mounted on the handlebar stem. So what are we left with? I know of no evidence that there ever was a Duck motorcycle, but the name refuses to die, viz. this entry in Hugo Wilson's 1995 "The Encyclopedia of the Motorcycle":
Oh well... In a later installment, I will have a go at killing off the other (non-) marque often mentioned in relation to the California: The Marks. Copyright © Leon Mitchell 1999
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