Early Amphibious Inventions

Wheels on boats, boats on wheels

Machines that could cross land and water are older than the motor car: Oliver Evans's steam-driven Oruktor Amphibolos of 1805, which has its own entry, came long before it ^[1]. Once the motor car arrived, many more attempts followed, and German Wikipedia notes that until the mid-1920s most of them came down to mounting a chassis on a boat ^[5]. Some of the results worked, some stayed on paper and some are known only from a line in a collector's list, so the evidence for each machine is given below ^[3][4].

Steam tugs and a paddling carriage

In Canada the West and Peachey foundry at Simcoe, Ontario, began making steam alligator tugs in 1889. They towed log booms with a winch and pulled themselves overland from lake to lake, and more than 230 had been built by 1932; they have their own entry ^[15].

A Danish machine called the Magrelen Amphibium, dated 1899 and said to have a combustion engine, heads an archived online list of amphibious cars attributed to René Pohl, with no picture ^[3]. German Wikipedia calls it the first known motorized amphibious vehicle but cites nothing for it ^[5].

Better recorded is the carriage that T. Richmond built at Jessup, Iowa, in 1905 ^[1][2]. It ran on three wheels: the single front wheel steered on land and in water, and a three-cylinder gasoline engine drove two oversized rear wheels ^[1]. Drawing on Pohl's 1998 book, Wikipedia calls its boat-shaped hull one of the first integral bodies on a car ^[1]. It swam with its wheels. Wikipedia describes fins or buckets fixed to the rear spokes, while a caption from Floyd Clymer's motoring scrapbook, quoted on the Antique Motorcycle Club of America forum, says hinged paddles opened and closed by themselves as the wheels turned ^[1][2]. The same caption adds a winter option: ice-boat spikes could be fitted and a runner placed under the front wheel, a change it says took only a few minutes ^[2]. Human-powered amphibious tricycles of the same era are covered separately.

Patents and paper amphibians

Patent offices saw the idea early. Edward Fournier of North Yakima, Washington, applied in March 1904 for an automobile boat and received US patent 802,852 in October 1905 ^[6]. His boat hull was bolted into sprung cradles on the axles of a wheeled land attachment, and one engine and one steering wheel served both the road wheels and a screw propeller and rudder ^[6]. Karl Maisch applied in 1906 for a Swiss patent on land and water automobiles, published in 1907 ^[7][5]. German patent 208,869, with a priority date of June 1907, claimed an ordinary car frame joined to a removable boat hull closed on every side ^[8]; German Wikipedia credits it to Jean Rech of Mehlem ^[5]. Jules Julien Ravaillier's boat-car, tested in Paris and patented in the United States in 1907, has its own entry ^[5].

Claims could outrun the hardware. In November 1921 American Automobile Digest described the Auto-Boat of the New Yorker Paul Panketan, a five- or seven-seat boat-bodied car said to reach nearly 90 mph (145 km/h) on land and an estimated 35 mph (56 km/h) afloat after lifting its wheels in 15 seconds ^[12]. Revisiting it in 2015, Old Cars Weekly judged the photos of it in the water to look retouched and found no sign that it went into production ^[12].

Boat-cars of the 1910s and 1920s

In 1916 Popular Science Monthly reported that Delia, a car with a boat body, had driven off a busy beach near San Francisco into the sea, toured the harbor briefly and returned to land ^[9]. The wheels passed through openings in the hull. In the water the drive was switched from the wheels to a propeller at the stern, and the steering wheel turned a rudder ^[9]. Shaft-style packing sealed the axle holes, the springs sat inside the hull, and the magazine gave a speed of about 10 mph (16 km/h) in water, adding that it was not meant for rough weather ^[10]. The magazine named Michael de Cosmo of San Francisco as the inventor ^[10]. Pohl's list gives the car as the Hydromotor (Delia), a small production of perhaps a handful of cars between 1914 and 1917, with no other record of that production found ^[3].

In England, Pohl lists the Mathieson Seacar of 1922 to 1924 as rescue boats on Ford Model T chassis, followed in 1923 by a larger version, the Barnes Amphibian, and another copy, the Robinsons Silver Spray; no other record of these three was found ^[3]. Others pushed themselves with an air propeller instead of paddles or a screw: Pohl lists the Garbaccio from Switzerland (1913), the Metcalf Amphiglyder from England (1920) and the McLaughlin Maine Mobile from the United States (1926), without further detail and with no other record found ^[3][4].

Survey boats, naval trials and a Channel crossing

In 1928 the volcanologist Thomas A. Jaggar used two amphibians, the Ford-based, paddle-wheeled Ohiki in Hawaii and the twin-screw steel Honukai in Alaska, which are covered in their own entry ^[13][14]. The Honukai came from George Powell, who, Jaggar wrote, already advertised a Ford-based mobile boat so fishermen could drive to inland lakes ^[13]. The USGS names the builder as the Powell Mobile-Boat Corporation of Chicago ^[14].

In Germany the Cuxhaven firm Hoppe und Krooss built an amphibious test vehicle in 1929 at the German navy's request, which the press called the Auto-Schiff, or car-ship ^[11]. The vehicle, which weighed about 4 tonnes (8,800 lb), joined a boat hull to a four-wheel-drive chassis with swing axles made under a patent of the Berlin firm Voran ^[11]. A 40 PS (39 hp) Opel four-cylinder drove the wheels through an Opel three-speed gearbox, and afloat it turned a three-blade propeller while the front wheels steered ^[11]. It made about 11 km/h (7 mph) in water and at most 24 km/h (15 mph) on land, was photographed on the North Sea in autumn 1929 and remained a single prototype ^[11].

Pohl's list also records a sea crossing in the mid-1930s: a Baulig amphibious car, dated 1935, that crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover ^[4]. The same list puts Hans Trippel's first Land-Wasser-Zepp amphibians in 1934 and 1935; Trippel has his own entry ^[4].

Machines covered

The table lists the machines and patents described above in date order. Many rest on a single collector's list, and those rows say so ^[3][4].

Rows marked as listed by Pohl rest only on an online list of amphibious cars attributed to René Pohl (archived copies from 2005), with no second source found. Years are those given by the cited source.

Photos

Related entries

• Oruktor AmphibolosATVs and work machines · 1805 to 1809
• Ravaillier Canot-Voiture (Waterland I)Amphibious cars · 1907
• Alligator Warping TugsAmphibious boats · 1889 to 1932
• Thomas Jaggar's Volcano AmphibiansUnusual and experimental · 1928
• Trippel amphibious cars (SG6)Amphibious cars · 1932 to 1943
• Amphibious Bicycles and TricyclesUnusual and experimental · 1869 to present
• How amphibious vehicles workHow it works ·