While browsing images in the British Museum, I came across this print. I don’t know how permanent it will be, but here is a link.
The caption reads “A party of people in a boat on wheels being pulled to right”. Museum number 1868,0328.173. Drawn by James Gillray, British, 1772-1794.
Detail from Plate 85, possibly a boat wagon
I recently read Captain Watson’s Travels in America: The Sketchbook and Diary of Joshua Rowley Watson, 1771-1818 by Kathleen A. Foster (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8122-3384-0. This is a delightful book the focuses on some sketchbooks of watercolors done by a British naval captain while visiting the United States. Plate 85 in this book shows a watercolor entitled “Looking down the Susquehannah fm Wrightsville ferry 25th April 1817”. On the right side, next to an inn, is a wagon which could be a boat wagon. Then again, it could have some other purpose.
This is a scan from Surirey de Saint-Remy’s Memoires d’Artillerie, Troisieme Edition, Volume II, plate 98, Paris: Chez Rollin Fils, 1745. It shows a wagon intended for pontoon boats similar to bateaux. The design is intended to be used with a set of wheels and shafts for horses or oxen that would attach to the left end of the wagon.