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21 August 2025 — Squirrel Cages, Rolling Pins, or Folly—The Era of the Roller Boats
There must have been something in the water.
In the decades surrounding the turn of the last century, when inventors, engineers, visionaries, and madmen were working furiously to dream up new ways to put emerging technologies to use in bigger, faster, and more efficient ways, a striking number of men were convinced that the ship design of the future would sweep ships’ structures up and out of the water, rolling over the waves instead of cutting through them. The basic goals were to reduce the frictional drag of water on the hull and reduce the loss of energy of pushing water aside that occurred when moving a traditional hull through the water. For those few decades, quite a few innovators believed that the Next Big Thing was some kind of roller boat—a craft whose point of contact with the water’s surface was a rounded object belonging to the wheel family.
One of the early inventors to have proposed such a craft was Robert Fryer, who was granted a patent for “certain new and useful Improvements in Buoyant Propeller-Ships”—suggesting that such craft were brewing in someone’s imagination even earlier!—in October of 1880. Viewed from the side in his schematics, Fryer’s vessel looks a wee bit like a tricycle, except with oversized spherical tires, designed to be maneuvered on the water. In fact, in the patent language, Fryer explains that his buoyant propeller ship was suitable to run on rails “as a land conveyance while crossing an isthmus, &c.” Fryer fabricated a model of his “ship,” which he tested in a water tank, and then on the Harlem River. Lieut. W. H. Jaques, who discussed the vessel in the US Naval Institute Proceedings of August 1882, reported that the initial test proceeded well enough that Fryer built a larger model, with buoyant globes six feet in diameter: “The steam model has been experimented with almost daily for four months, carrying two to twenty passengers.” Fryer made a prototype of his idea, the Alice, some twelve years later, but the inventor struggled with a means of propelling the craft through the water, and Alice ended up not getting very far—either literally or figuratively.
| One of the schematic drawings of Robert Fryer’s patent for the buoyant propeller ship. A letter to the editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer from someone claiming to have ridden aboard the buoyant propeller described the vessel as “fifteen or twenty feet long, propelled on globes of air… There are little flanges protruding from the globes, which are also paddle-wheels. An engine on the deck makes these two axles revolve.” He went on to explain that Fryer planned on building a full-sized ship for ocean service “which will be 255 feet long and have state-room accommodations for 225 people.” PD. | |
One of the more well-publicized examples of a roller ship was launched in August 1896 at Saint-Denis on the Seine, bearing the name of its inventor, Ernest Bazin. The Strand Magazine asserted that 20,000 people, among them admirals and naval officers, turned out to witness the debut of Bazin’s boat. It consisted of a rectangular platform on six hollow lenticular rollers of about 39 feet in diameter and 12 feet thick. It was taken from Saint-Denis to Rouen for the installation of engines and machinery; each pair of rollers was powered by a 50-horsepower engine, and a 550-horsepower engine drove a screw propeller, located between the two rows of rollers. Scientific American deemed the vessel “so original that the results of [its] trial will be watched with the greatest interest,” and reported the inventor’s hopes that the new vessel would be so efficient that it would only consume one-half the amount of coal that traditional steamships required for ocean transits, and that its inherent stability would reduce the incidence of seasickness among its lucky passengers. Additionally, such a vessel would be easier to repair, because such a large proportion of it would be above the water.
Unfortunately, the Bazin didn’t fare well under real-world conditions; in a failed attempt to cross the English Channel, water adhered to the surface of the rollers to such an extent that it acted as a brake, and essentially the vessel needed far more fuel than the inventor’s projections, only to achieve a speed far below his target. Monsieur Bazin returned to his drawing board and later announced that he had completed plans for a new iteration of his roller boat, but died just weeks later, in January of 1898. The Bazin was sold to a London firm for £1,200. While the steel wheels were sold off for scrap, the base was destined to become a pontoon landing stage.
| (Above) The basic frame of the roller boat Ernest-Bazin at Saint-Denis, 1896. (Below) Ernest-Bazin with deckhouses and machinery installed. PD | Another hopeful roller boat designer covered heavily in the press was Canadian lawyer Frederick Knapp. His take on the concept, however, was to make the roller the actual boat. His steamer was a long cylinder set within another, larger cylinder; engines at each end transferred a rolling motion to the outer cylinder, as Popular Mechanics phrased it: “just as a squirrel spins the wheels of his cage by mad attempts to ascend the bars of the circular prison.” Knapp explained his invention’s theoretical underpinnings to the Marine Review: “Water is 825 times heavier than the air, but the Campania goes through it, necessarily at a reduced speed. With my vessel, the resistance of skin friction and the blow of a wave which is much below the center, knocking her legs from under her so to speak, are aids to speed. I turn the enemy into a friend and am working with nature instead of fighting her.” | | |
(Above) The interior of Knapp’s roller boat, 1897. (Below) The roller boat in action. When the vessel underwent its first trial run, the Toronto Saturday Night was full of optimism, but confessed that the prototype “revealed serious faults in its interior arrangements, and… the machinery seemed greatly perplexed by the instability of its settings.”
PD.
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Despite the fact that he had yet to produce a successful, reliable working vessel, the inventor attempted to market his design to the US Navy as a troop ship or collier. The Buffalo Express wrote:
Mr. Knapp’s experiments with his strange craft in Toronto harbor last summer are fresh in the minds of people of the lakes, and it is, therefore, with considerable awe that one reads of the proposal the inventor intends to make to the Washington authorities. He asserts that he can build a boat 200 feet high in three months and that it would be an ideal troop-ship…. As the boat would draw little water, it could get very close to the land. “It would not need to enter any particular port,” says the inventor, “but could land troops at any point on the shores of Cuba.” It is said that Señor du Bose, the first secretary of the Spanish legation to the United States, inspected the craft at Toronto, a few days ago, and advised Mr. Knapp to open negotiations with the Spanish government, with a view to selling it a boat. This should be done by all means. A craft 200 feet high and rolling around like a porpoise would be a beautiful thing for American sailors to shoot at.
Unfortunately, despite Knapp’s steadfast faith in his invention, throughout the modifications he made to the vessel for several iterations, it underperformed and remained difficult to steer. Like an eager golden retriever, it seemed intent on heading straight for mud, and repeatedly grounded. The “Floating Rolling Pin,” also sometimes derided as “Knapp’s Folly,” eventually broke from her mooring and crashed into another vessel docked nearby; it was sold for scrap to pay for the damages but never removed. It is believed to have been incorporated into the landfill when Toronto’s shoreline was expanded.
| | Peter Beckman started out to sea from Bar Harbor, ME, in his homemade craft in September of 1897. He found, however, that he was not able to overcome the wind direction and maneuver the craft, and was rescued by a passing freighter en route to New York. Reported the Scientific American: “At Mr. Beckman's earnest solicitation an attempt was made to tow the rolling boat; but after the hawser had parted, the craft was left to continue its voyage alone across the Atlantic.” PD. | | |
Knapp’s floating cylinder was the last roller boat to get any significant financial backing and publicity, but during this period in the popular press one could often find pictures of fantastical boat prototypes of the roller-boat family, some resembling armored hamster balls, one looking like a paddlewheel half-unpacked in its storage crate. These vessels may not have found success or acclaim, but they do make for fascinating reading from an era when everyone seemed to be asking: “What, really, is a boat?”
Extra Credit
3-D model images of Ernest-Bazin
Sea History Today is written by Shelley Reid, NMHS senior staff writer. Past issues can be read online by clicking here.
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