then to Japan, where the ship sank on a sand bar in Yokohama in March. Finding another ship, the party went on to the Middle East, then to Western Europe ending up in Paris. They returned to the United States in November 1907, landing in New York just in time for the Panic of 1907 which drove the bulls out of Wall Street for a time, bringing the financial sector to ruins. By 1911, Ryan was operating from a "cottage" he owned on Harsen's Island, in Lake St. Clair just off Algonac, a village located about thirty miles north of Detroit. From his theater business connections, Ryan had become acquainted with J. Stuart Blackton who was a principal founder of the Vitagraph Motion Picture Company. Blackton lived in a Long Island mansion, with a fleet of boats moored in the sound in front of his residence. Thinking there was money to be made, Ryan formed a company with an Algonac mechanic named Chris Smith, to build a racing motorboat. The company was called the Smith & Ryan Boat & Engine Company and the one-step hydroplane boat the two men designed and built was called the Baby Reliance. Blackton bought the first of several of these boats and they were raced at regattas held at New York, Chicago and other places during 1910 and 1911. Ryan was at the wheel during several of these races and won, among others, the Wrigley Trophy, which was displayed for years in a window of Marshall Field's in Chicago. (Another reference has Blackton, owner of the power boat Baby Reliance II, and a member of the Atlantic Yacht Club of New York, winning the Wrigley trophy in August 1912.) In the fall of 1913, Ryan became bored with the boat-building business and dumped Smith. According to his daughter, Marie, he took $100,000 from the company safe and walked away. Eight years later, as the Roaring Twenties began, Chris Smith, with his brothers, was building the great speed boats of the Chris-Craft line, selling thousands.(During World War I, Ryan got a contract with the Navy Department to build, using the Baby Reliance design, what was essentially a prototype PT boat. This episode ended in litigation.)) Ryan moved on to manage a famous casino at 21 West Elizabeth Street in downtown Detroit. For a brief period in 1914, Ryan operated a gambling house in Detroit, called the