The Sign Of The Four - The Boat Chase

How accurate, as in historically and also in terms of what Doyle was trying to describe, was the boat chase in the TV movie? In the book, for me, the chase was one of the more exciting moments in the whole canon. In the film however it was so bad that I actually burst out laughing at how pathetic it was. It was like watching two little boats from Disney World's Jungle Cruise putter after each other in a low-low-speed pursuit. It was definitely not what I had imagined while reading the book. I wasn't imagining some James Bond style speedboat chase or anything, but I was envisioning boats that were more large/impressive moving at a little bit of a faster clip than that. I was worried about a fish fart capsizing Holmes' boat or a swimmer passing them by. It was an otherwise great adaptation of the book (as so many of the Granada adaptations are), but was the chase a victim of budget/equipment restrictions or were they really being faithful to what was in the book and it just seemed underwhelming to my modern sensibilities?

"Dan Marino should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell. Would you like a cookie son?"