Gitana, and orders started mounting. John Thornycroft was not the only supplier of torpedo boats, but his influence was so big that the Encyclopedia of Ships and Shipping characterised him as the founder of the torpedo-boat industry. The weight of the boiler system (of the locomotive type) precluded speeds over , and Thornycroft set out to work on an improved system. Water-tube boilers already existed, and Thornycroft built the river-steamer Peace in 1882 with that type of boilers, of the Herreshoff design. In 1885 his improved system was ready, and it became one of the most important of the 50–60 patents he obtained between 1873 and 1924. Built with the new boilers, the Spanish Ariete reached on trials in 1887, and in 1894 the yard delivered the torpedo gunboat HMS Speedy to the Royal Navy, which was the first ship with water-tube boilers in that Navy. Like other engineers before and after him, Thornycroft tried to solve the problem of how to reduce rolling in ships. He bought the yacht Cecile of 300 tons and installed a device consisting of a 6-ton moveable watertank, controlled by hydraulic cylinders. John Thornycoft presented his results to the Institution of Naval Architects in 1892, but although his invention was able to dampen rolling, it was not proceeded with. In 1894, Thornycroft and his employee Sydney W. Barnaby were some of the first to record the effects of cavitation during the tests of the destroyer Daring. The tests revealed that the narrow blade screws of the day ceased to be effective at high speeds, and as a result the screws were replaced by a new wider blade model. The old screws would do at , while the new ones delivered with the same power. John Thornycroft entered a new field of business in 1896, when he built a steam-powered lorry for his local Chiswick Urban District, and formed the Thornycroft Steam Carriage and Wagon Company. More followed, and in 1901 he made a breakthrough by winning the War Office's competition for heavy lorries for military use. In 1898 the company opened a new factory for lorries in Basingstoke, and Thornycroft's quickly grew to become the town's largest employer. Later, the company also began building combustion-engine vehicles, and production continued at Basingstoke until 1969. In his quest for still faster vessels, John Thornycroft made several tests with different hull-shapes, eventually settling on a stepped hull