The rising middle class wanted to see America. The explosion of bicycle patents during this era includes a largely forgotten Portsmouth experiment in human-powered transportation. Why not, Major David Urch of Portsmouth asked, adapt the land bicycle to use on the water?

In 1881 Urch was among a host of inventors experimenting with waterborne bicycles – or "aquapeds" or "hydrobicycles" or "tachypodoscaphs". The name, like the vehicles, never caught on. Bicycle historian Charles Meinert has documented 35 patents for water bicycles during this era, most using a paddle-wheel system. The majority of them were designed by amateurs, not engineers, and never got off the drawing board.

Urch actually patented, built, and marketed his Marine Bicycle Company of Portsmouth, and sold as many as 100 water bicycles, according to Meinert. One surviving Urch vehicle (bearing registration # 46) has recently been restored and is operated by a New York collector. Urch employed a catamaran design with the bicycle frame fixed between two floating hulls. The operator, sitting high and dry on a single big wheel, could carry one passenger. An attached sail provided wind power, when available, and doubled as a canopy against the sun.

David Urch was as unique as his invention. Born in Wales in 1844 (his death date has not been found), he fought in the American Civil War and served in the NH Senate. A rattan furniture maker by trade, Urch is best known as the owner of the toll road and bridge that connected Portsmouth to New Castle island. Here Urch set up a "circus-like" roadside attraction that featured aquarium tanks, live seals and trained horses that jumped from a platform into the river. In 1915 he also built and operated a local "jitney", a connected train of cars powered by a six-cylinder Studebaker engine that taxied visitors and their luggage from Portsmouth’s train station to The Wentworth. The jitney stopped, of course, at Urch’s aquarium, where boats could be rented.

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