Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1894 — A SEASICK CYCLER. [ARTICLE]

A SEASICK CYCLER.

A Novel Voyage and Its Failure. Harper’s Young People. George Pinkert’s water tricycle is the most remarkable development of the velocipede idea that has yet come before the public. The inventor is a citizen of Hamburg, Germany, and he probably drew his inspiration from the desire to navigate the North Sea that fills the breast of all good Hamburgers. It is possible to run the thing on land, but it is not much fun. The two principal wheels are four and one-half feet in diameter, and nearly twenty inches thick. They are made of sheet iron and divided into three air-tight compartments, so arranged that if any one of them springs a leak the other two will keep the machine afloat. On the outside of the drivingwheels are fastened sets of paddles four inches wide and eight inches long. Mr. Pinkert steers with the small wheel of the tricycle, which is less than three feet in diameter, and has no paddles. Rubber tires on all the wheels fit the machine for land travel, but it is very heavy, and the best speed the inventor claims for it on a good road is nine and a one-half miles an hour. On the river, he says, he can make seven miles an hour, or a little better than that with a good current. On the sea Mr. Pinkert hoped to advance at the rate of a mile in fifteen minutes—but alas! he forgot to reckon on the interference of seasickness with the most ambitious plans. Everything went well during the trial trips -Mr. Pinkert made on Swiss lakes and the rivers of northern Germany. He was his own marine engine, and his side-wheel craft splashed along nobly. Ambition seized on Mr. Pinkert. If Webb had swum the English channel, and the Oxford crew had rowed across, why shouldn’t he traverse it with rushing fore-wheel and roaring drivers?

So, putting on his best uniform, and carefully strapping on board a good supply of water and provisions, the sea-going ’cycler forth from Calais one July morning. Very little breeze was blowing, but that came, from the southeast, so there was plenty of fog, and no prospect of clear weather. A sailor would have hesitated before embarking under such conditions, especially on such a tricky strait as the English channel; but Mr. Pinkert was no sailor, and, besides, he was, as I have said, full of ambition. He launched his wheel —or wheels —and with very little effort paddled along the shore of Calais. A big crowd watched him.-’ After half an hour’s steady wheeling he was s wallowed up in the fog headed straight for Dover. Then a storm came up and blew him far from his course. When the wind quit playing with him he was in the North sea, but he did not know it, poor fellow, and kept paddling steadily forward. The waves rolled the bulky tricycle into all sorts of awkward positions, and came near capsizing it. Mr. Pinkert had that awful feeling —pains across, and loss of appetite, and general woe. A fishing smack picked him up and landed him at him at Boulogne. Not a bit disheartened, he tried the channel: trip again. Once more seasickness overcame him. He is going to keep on trying until he succeeds.