A team boat, horse boat, or horse ferry, is a watercraft powered by horses or mules, generally using a treadmill, which serves as a horse engine. Team boats were popular as ferries in the United States from the mid-1810s to the 1850s.
Types The first documented horse-powered boat in the United States was built on the Delaware River in 1791 by John Fitch.
There are three types of team boats. In one, four or five horses are placed in each side of the boat in a circular treadwheel, and the paddle wheels, arranged like the side wheel steamboat of later days were turned by means of cogs and gearing connected with other cogs on the shaft of the paddle wheels. The horses were hitched to strong timbers and by a forward movement of the feet caused the treadwheel upon which they stood to revolve and thus operate the gear wheels. Another type of team boat uses a "horse whim," a type of horse mill. It has a large revolving wheel in the middle, and a center post known as a "whim" (or horse capstan). The horses, which are attached to the horse whim, walk around in a circle, causing the wheel or capstan to revolve, which in turn rotates gears that rotate the paddles, or bucket wheels. The team boat of this style consisted of two complete hulls, united by a deck or bridge, but separated far enough apart to allow the paddle wheel to be set between them. They are sharp at both ends, and can be propelled backward or forward with equal ease. A third design for team boats was invented in 1819, by Barnabas Langdon. Langdon's turntable design permitted the horses to walk straight ahead instead of in circles. "Langdon placed a rotating turntable slightly below the level of the boat's deck; horses stood atop the turntable through large slots in the deck and drove the wheel backward by walking in place. This design eased the burden on the horses, freed up valuable deck space, and allowed the ferry to be built atop one hull." One description of a turntable type team boat using six horses says, "The treadmills, on either side, were each trod by three horses always facing in the same direction. To reverse the paddlewheels it was only necessary to stop the horses a minute, and withdraw a drop pin that would reverse the gearing."
The Experiment
The Experiment, built sometime around 1807–1810, was an early horse-powered ferry boat. It was a twelve-ton three-mast boat drawing a few feet of water, about 100 feet long by 20 feet beam. Its driving mechanism, an in-water screw, was invented by David Grieve in 1801. The boat was constructed by David Wilkinson (some sources give his name as Varnum) in 1807 to 1810, depending on the source. It was propelled by a "goose-foot paddle" large mechanical screw propeller in the water (instead of a paddle wheel at water surface). The new technology devised by Grieve and Wilkinson was powered by eight horses on a treadmill. The horse boat technology to propel the boat upstream was originally invented by David Grieve and granted a patent February 24, 1801 in the patent category of "Boats to ascend rivers". The complete recorded patent was lost in the 1836 U.S. Patent Office fire. The novel idea of propelling vessels upstream by the use of a large mechanical screw in the water is now referred to as Ericsson’s propeller.
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