Paddle steamboats had been around for a century and propellers for half a century before the first proper motorboat took to the River Neckar near Stuttgart, Germany, in 1887. It had a petrol-driven internal combustion engine and was built by Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) and Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929).
Rumor had it that the two inventors were looking for a less risky vehicle for their new engine than the old stagecoach they had recently motorized. The 14.7 foot (4.5 m) long boat traveled at a maximum speed of 6 knots. Daimler practiced a mild deceit on his nervous first customers, by concealing the engine with a ceramic cover and informing them that it was "oil-electrical," which sounded a great deal safer than the potentially explosive petrol. The deceit clearly worked because the Neckar, as it was called, sold well. It was produced by the recently formed Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG), and sales were undoubtedly helped by the poor state of German roads at the time.
Yet another German inventor, Rudolph Diesel, followed close behind Daimler and Maybach, introducing a diesel engine into boats in 1903 with instant commercial success. Indeed, for marine use diesel engines were to have a greater long-term future than petrol, proving to be more reliable and safer as they used a less flammable fuel.
The inventor of the first British motorboat was Frederick W. Lanchester, who had built the first gasoline-driven car in England in 1896. His design— launched in Oxford in 1904 and built in his back garden—had a stern paddle wheel and was powered by an engine with a wick-based carburetor that, despite being described as looking like a bed of celery when opened up, worked very efficiently.
