The special boat: Pioneer motorboat "Marie" was to popularise the Daimler engine
Nils Theurer
· 10.04.2026
On 13 October 1887, Gottlieb Daimler presented his innovative combustion engine on the Waldsee near Baden-Baden. Built into the "Rems", which was only six metres long, the Jockel attracted the attention of those present. There had never been anything like it before.
Despite the technical sensation, the report on Daimler's demonstration only appeared under the heading "Miscellaneous". The "Badener Wochenblatt" submissively listed the dignitaries present: Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, princes, mayors and city councillors. The politely praising gentlemen had just witnessed a sensation: the first light, economical engine in a boat. Who knows what would have become of the Daimler engines, or Gottlieb Daimler in general, without his motorboats.
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The design was also remarkable. The "Rems" resembled a tiny steamer, it was the first small motorboat in the world, the ancestor of today's leisure boats, so to speak. Just like the "Marie" a short time later.
The "Badeblatt für die Großherzogliche Stadt Baden" was still amazed: "It moves at great speed", the engine works "regularly and without any noticeable noise". The single-cylinder engine with one and a half horsepower produced a warm "Pöttel-Pöttel" sound that can still be heard today in the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. There you will find such a "grandfather clock", as the engine was called due to its vertical design.
Motorised "riding carriages"
The "Rems" is not on display alongside the historic motorised carriages. It was in the Deutsches Museum in Munich until bombs destroyed almost a quarter of the exhibits. Instead, the Mercedes-Benz Museum has the "Marie", a lucky return. And actually a case for the lobby register.
This is how it came about: Daimler, today a prototype of the start-up entrepreneur, had not only taken shares worth 112,000 marks with him after his time at the Deutz gas engine factory in Cologne, but also his inventor Wilhelm Maybach. He converted a greenhouse in his house in the Cannstatt district of Stuttgart into a workshop. Together with Maybach, he developed a lightweight engine to power vehicles - on land, on water and in the air.
But the population was sceptical. The Stuttgart police banned the innovator from test driving his motorised "riding carriage", for which he had applied for a patent in the summer of 1885. So in 1886 he switched to the Neckar, where he tested boats at night because it was initially impossible during the day. To dispel reservations, he camouflaged the engine box with porcelain insulators and claimed that the boat ran "oil-electrically", or "electrically" in Swabian dialect.
"Marie" is a special edition of this first motorboat
The dignitaries in Baden-Baden "expressed their appreciation of the very remarkable invention". They were driven to Baden-Baden railway station - on horseback. Daimler demonstrated his motorised trolley with an internal combustion engine here. However, steam-powered trains had already been travelling to Baden-Baden for twenty-two years. The draisine must have looked modest compared to the heavy railway carriages; in principle, it consisted of two church benches in track width on four wheels with the same "grandfather clock".
How elegant the motorboat was! Daimler had ordered the hull from Friedrich Lürssen. The "Rems", named after a tributary of the Neckar, had beautifully streamlined lines and a nice deck projection, visually enhanced by the clinker construction. The boat ended in a wide, sweeping stern. Corresponding to this was the almost vertical stern, set on the actually positive bow by a trick with an extended stern bend.
And the "Marie" on display is a special edition of this first motorboat, very splendid, it only exists once. No other motorboat from this era has survived. The "Marie" was merely a promotional gift. Although the hull and subsequent hulls had already been launched at Anderssen in Neckarsulm, the first order was a, well, initial spark for the small Bremen shipyard. In the meantime, Lürssen has become a shipyard group with a nine-figure turnover, although exact details are not publicised.
Today, the shipyard proudly presents itself at yacht shows with a model of the first motorboat "Rems". Some future owners receive one; the shipyard does not reveal what minimum length the order must have.
Back to the 19th century. Daimler had already created publicity before its presentation in Baden-Baden. At a rowing regatta in Frankfurt, he used his engine to drive up and down at around six knots in a, yes, cardboard boat for the first time in public, but by no means officially, in front of the astonished spectators. The police turned up, perhaps the publicity was just what he needed. It was necessary, because the land vehicles were not doing well. And Daimler also knew about his competitor Carl Benz, who had founded his "gas engine factory" in Mannheim, Baden, not far from Stuttgart, in October 1883. His money came from his forward-thinking partner Bertha, who invested her dowry even before the two had married. This Carl Benz had astounded the world in 1886 with his three-wheeled Benz motorised car. The vehicle was a newly developed vehicle, light, innovative and business-boosting. True, Daimler and Benz only came together much later; at the time they were competitors.
Revenge for Bertha Benz
When Bertha Benz then grabbed her husband's motor car in August 1888 and bumped the one hundred and six kilometres to her mother in Pforzheim with two of her sons, Gottlieb Daimler may have realised that he had something to counter this event. Not only did Bertha drive back a few days later - she had also mastered all the technical problems herself. Among other things, she insulated an electrical cable with her garter and cleaned the clogged petrol pipe with a hatpin.
A few days after their return, a motorised airship took off from Daimler's factory yard, probably as revenge. The distance as the crow flies from Cannstatt to Kornwestheim was four kilometres, the first ever powered flight. The Wright brothers did not take off with their aerodynamic motorised aircraft until fifteen years later.
Although Dr Friedrich Hermann Wölfert is the initiator of this gas-filled lemon with gondola, he weighs one hundred kilograms. Daimler's employee Gotthilf Wirsum, thirty kilograms lighter, jumps in and becomes the first pilot of a motorised aircraft. The "grandfather clock" also works in the airship gondola, now a model with two horsepower. It turns two fabric-covered screws for propulsion and lift at an astonishing twelve revolutions per second.
"Marie", a little boat for Otto von Bismarck
In the same year, 1888, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was also given a small boat, the motorised pilot boat "Marie". It was similar to the "Neckar" for ten people, the largest of Daimler's three pilot boats. It's a bit cramped if you imagine it in the little "Marie". Daimler supplied the promotional gift "Marie" with gleaming brass handrails - or were they supposed to indicate a railing? There is gold colour on the protruding bow decoration, which was made by the Stuttgart art foundry Paul Stotz & Co. from iron or bronze. Accordingly, there is a small stock anchor on the tiny foredeck so as not to further challenge the unfavourable displacement far above the waterline. The harmonious sun canopy rests on brass supports, while angular valances match the appearance of the pleasure boat.
Bismarck christened it with the name of his first daughter, Marie, and placed it in the water on the dammed floodplain next to his new home Friedrichsruh. According to the Otto von Bismarck Foundation, he received so many gifts that two museums are now equipped with them.
In any case, sales took off and it was not only in Cannstatt that the motorboat saved the day until car production began. Meanwhile, the "Marie" was regarded as the model for hundreds of motorboats in Hamburg harbour. On 18 October 1888, exactly one year after the presentation on the Waldsee, Gottlieb Daimler used the opening of the free port in Hamburg, a big celebration, to present his "Seven Swabians", the first motorboat in salt water. How clever! The seven Swabians are seven dolts who try to chase a hare together with a lance. Swabian pranks, in other words. How Daimler could laugh at himself.
87 boats and engines sold in ten years
One year later, in 1889, the first Daimler motorboat was launched off New York. This was followed by units in Amsterdam, Trieste, Stockholm, Copenhagen and London. If the automobiles didn't work out at first, the motorboats kept mobility pioneer Daimler afloat. He had a shipyard built on the banks of the Neckar near Cannstatt. However, the keels of the hulls were laid in other factories and Daimler put the drive and boat together. In the ten years up to 1898, the company sold 87 boats. And engines, the most important thing.
The 1992 price list promised engines that "require almost no cleaning and do not cause nuisance through heat, smoke or odour". This may have been a relative statement. The smallest five-metre motorboat was available from 2,680 marks, while the twelve-metre design, "elegant, with a setboard, with bench boxes", was priced at 11,000 marks. Cabin boats were simply listed at "Mark 8,000 up to Mark 25,000". Basic tools, such as "1 ignition hat spanner" or "1 hammer", were included alongside sculls, but flagpoles, anchors and chains were not. The programme also included machines for paddlewheel constructions, probably also for replacing existing steam engines. Marine engine technicians could be ordered for on-site installation at "10.50 marks a day for 10 hours' work and travelling expenses in the III. carriage class".
In the year of this price list, 1892, a Daimler boat circumnavigated Sicily, 540 nautical miles, 88 hours, a good six knots on average. A Bertha Benz voyage, so to speak. In the same year, he developed another "use case", to stick with the start-up vocabulary, a motorised fire engine. This can also be seen in the Mercedes-Benz Museum. The drawbar mount is remarkable; the sprayer was still pulled to the scene by horses. The fire brigades were too reluctant to handle flammable petrol at fires. But finally, the motorised pumps were ready for use in just a few minutes and did not require hours of preheating like the conventional steam pumps. When a bedspring factory in Cannstatt caught fire in 1892, a motorised pump replaced 32 firefighters at hand pumps for five hours. Good advertising.
Growing market for motorboats with small inboard engines
Hard to imagine today, there was little love between the automobiles and the population. It may have been luck or desperation that the Benz, Maybach and Daimler found their first customers in France. In chic French circles, such a technical toy enhanced their status. Both Benz and Daimler initially presented special cars, well - cars? At Benz it was the three-wheeled motorised car, at Daimler the equally innovatively designed steel-wheeled car. However, both were only successful with optical and technical setbacks, and the first motorised cars sold in this country resembled carriages again, although their centre of gravity was both unnecessary and far too high for a motorised car without horses. Similar to the likewise very classically designed motorboats.
It is a fact that Daimler and Benz never spoke to each other. They knew about each other, perhaps the engines would not have developed so rapidly without the competition. The two pioneers also realised that the market for the replacement product, motorboats with a small inboard engine, could be finite.
A certain Ole Evinrude did not invent the outboard motor; in fact, experiments with this type of engine had been going on since 1881. However, Evinrude showed the concept to a wide audience, and he was on a par with Daimler and Benz in terms of marketing. The marketing gimmick came from his wife Bess, who designed an advert with the text: "Don't row! Throw away the oars!" Within the first four months, a thousand people placed orders.
Technical data of the "Marie"
- Length/width: 5.50 m/1.45 m
- Depth: 1,90 m
- Displacement empty: 905 kg
- Motor: Vertical water-cooled four-stroke petrol engine, single cylinder
- Performance: 1.1 hp at 650 rpm.
- Power transmission: Directly on the screw
- Maximum speed: approx. 5.5 kn
- Construction: Gottlieb Daimler
