This month in 1893, the formal start of an effort to build a new kind of seagoing vessel: a ship with rolling wheels.
You will be forgiven if this sounds puzzling, but the idea did have a practical purpose.
In the late 19th Century, the only way to get from continent to continent was by ocean liner, and getting those huge ships from place to place took a lot of time, work and energy.
So along came French inventor Ernest Bazin, who figured the way to get a big shop through the water faster was to make the hull itself part of what made the ship move.
His ship design had a long rectangular platform that framed several pairs of large, hollow rollers powered by a series of engines.
Bazin thought those wheels would keep more of the ship’s hull out of the water.
That would reduce friction and let ships go much faster than before.
Ships, he said, could cross the ocean in just a few days instead of weeks, and they would use a lot less fuel to make those crossings than standard steamships.
Bazin also thought the design would let this “roller ship” continue to move forward even after taking on damage from a collision or a storm, because if a pair of rollers stopped working the others could keep going.
But when that 280-ton vessel (which Bazin named for himself) hit the water, those boasts did not come true.
The rollers that were supposed to speed a ship along actually slowed it down, by churning up a huge amount of water.
It couldn’t even manage half the speed of a conventional ship.
One account called it “a pathetic monument of misdirected energy.”
And that was pretty much it for Ernest Bazin’s foray into “roller ships.”
He only made that one; when it was put up for sale a few years later there were no offers to buy the vessel, and it was eventually scrapped.
Now underway in Louisiana, it’s the Natchitoches Christmas Festival.
There are six weeks’ worth of events and activities – live music, a craft market, home tours, drone shows, fireworks, hundreds of light installations and a chance to have cookies with Santa.
Or how about a spot on the lighted boat parade?
Across the Ocean in One Hundred Hours (The Illustrated American via Google Books)
98th Annual Natchitoches Christmas Festival
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Image by Louis Poyet via Wikicommons
