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Ship of the Month - cont'd. 8. the craft. Steam was got up and the roller reached Bowmanville at 8 p. m. that evening. "Mr. Knapp says he has demonstrated beyond a doubt that his boat will steer easily and when the improvements he intends making are completed he will prove his novel craft to be all that he promised. The roller will likely ar­ rive here (Prescott) on Wednesday. " We should note that other sources do not agree with the report that a steam launch and coal barge went out and got ROLLER BOAT moving again. It was otherwise reported that Knapp and Farini simply managed to obtain a few sacks of coal and rowed back to the ROLLER BOAT. We sincerely doubt this version, since if the ROLLER BOAT had by then been blown 15 miles out into the lake, how could Knapp and Farini catch her in a rowboat loaded with coal sacks, much less even find the wayward ROLLER BOAT in the storm? Regardless of how the two men managed to get more bunkers aboard ROLLER BOAT, they did get her under steam again. She did not, however, exactly "reach" Bowmanville (or its harbour at Port Darlington) in the normal sense of the word. Instead, the coal supply again ran out and ROLLER BOAT, blown along by the wind which, by this time was coming out of the southwest, went ashore under the bluff at Raby Head, some five miles east of the entrance to Oshawa Harbour, and two miles west of Port Darlington. As a precaution against another wind change, Knapp secured the ROLLER BOAT to a tree by means of a hawser. And there ROLLER BOAT lay for five weeks. Knapp had hoped to have a tug pull his craft easily off the beach and take her to Port Darlington, but this turned out not to be possible. Local residents took advantage of the ROLLER BOAT's unexpected arrival on their shore to inspect the strange ship, and many locals picnicked at nearby Mann's Point while watching the salvage ope­ rations being conducted by the Kingston Wrecking Company. There are at least two photographs showing ROLLER BOAT ashore at Raby Head, but neither is of sufficiently good quality for us to reproduce for our readers. Finally, on Friday, July 14th, 1899, one of the wrecking company's tugs ma­ naged to pull ROLLER BOAT off the beach, and begin the long tow to Prescott. ROLLER BOAT had made only some forty miles of the journey under her own power, and had given the lie to Knapp's claim that a rolling boat would be good for landing troops on any shore, and could easily be rolled off the shore should she ever go aground. ROLLER BOAT successfully completed the tow to Prescott and nothing more was heard of her in Toronto until on May 12, 1900, "The Mail and Empire" carried a report from Montreal, dated May 11th. It indicated that another test of the ROLLER BOAT was to be made on the 12th at Prescott before a number of Montreal capitalists. We are not certain whether this means that Knapp was trying to enlist their support in converting ROLLER BOAT for use as a Pres­ cott to Ogdensburg ferry, or whether he still was dreaming of the grain trade. We suspect the latter, because the same paper, on January 5th, 1901, carried a report dated January 4 from Montreal: "Frederick A. Knapp of roller boat fame, is at present in Montreal conducting negotiations with a prominent grain handler, which it is expected will lead to the construction of an experimental fleet of roller grain barges on the St. Lawrence. " Again, nothing came of this. Surely, by now, Knapp was beginning to realize that building a rolling boat that worked (albeit not awfully well), was much different that trying to find something useful for it to do. ROLLER BOAT next made the news as a result of an incident which occurred on Monday, November 25th, 1901. Amongst many newspapers that described the event, "The Vermilion (Ohio) News" on November 28th carried an article date­ lined Ogdensburg, New York, November 26th: "Knapp's roller boat yesterday demonstrated its ability to roll. In a blinding snow storm, with a stiff