This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

At 21, Samuel Henry Sharman arrived in Utah from Montana in 1900, filled with dreams and determination. An early adopter of the automobile, Sam opened his own dealership in Salt Lake City by at least 1906, selling first the Maxwell and later Cadillacs and Chevrolets.

For recreation, Sam liked to hunt ducks on the Great Salt Lake. Although he lived at the north end of the Salt Lake Valley, he had ties to the Duckville Gun Club based in the Bear River Bay to the north.

And that bit of geography between his home and his favorite hunting grounds was a bit of a problem. He had his car, of course, but it still took a couple of hours out of his hunting day to drive to Corinne. It might have been faster to go by water, but between dry land and the nearest open water lay an ever-changing borderland of marsh and mud flat.

What he needed, Sam realized, was something that could travel on dry land, negotiate mud and marsh, and then cross the lake. But what a wild fantasy! What machine could travel over both land and water?

Sam mulled over his problem until inspiration struck in the fall of 1910. What if he combined one of his automobiles and one of his boats? A boat with wheels and an automobile engine? Such a thing could cross land and mud flat, and, when water became too deep for its wheels to be useful, its function as a boat would take over. Off Sam would sail to menace Utah's migratory birds.

So he tinkered. He directed his friends Harry Finch, Bert Bailey, W.T. Benson and Dick Rogers as they combined parts of a boat and one of Sam's cars into a contraption with hull and wheels, one of the world's first gasoline-powered amphibious vehicles.

He recruited two brave souls — Cook and Muldoon, first names unfortunately not recorded — to test his invention in November 1910.

The men would drive along the Jordan across dry land and mud flat, then enter the lake at the mouth of the Jordan and head north. Sam telephoned one of his friends from the Duckville Gun Club who agreed to build a huge signal fire at some convenient point because for some reason, Sam wanted the maiden voyage to take place at night.

And for some reason, Sam choose not to test his craft himself, despite his guarantee that his mutant creature "would negotiate the heavy water of the Great Salt Lake, the River Jordan mud flats, a well irrigated patch of alfalfa, and a heavy dew on a grass meadow."

With apparent confidence in every detail, though, Sam bid bon voyage to his Captain Cook and First Mate Muldoon on the night of Nov. 10, and the crew set off. All went well while the craft was on dry land. It negotiated the muddy borderlands with ease. It took to the open water heading north. And somewhere along the eastern coast of Antelope Island, it took on water and sank.

Cook waded back through waist-deep water toward Bountiful. Muldoon mutinied and headed for the nearer Antelope Island. When Cook reached shore he telephoned Sharman, who made arrangements to send a rescue party for Muldoon in the morning. We can hope he also remembered to call the Duckville Gun Club so that its guide didn't spend the whole night stoking a beacon fire for sailors who never came.

Sam stayed in the automobile business, and he kept up his duck hunting. He went to the Paris Olympics in 1924, earning a team gold medal for marksmanship. He won trophies for his deadly accurate aim all through the 1920s and '30s, and he was an early inductee into Utah's Trap Shooting Association Hall of Fame. He eventually left Utah for Los Angeles, where he died in 1951.

So far as is known, he never built another boat.

Ardis E. Parshall is a Utah historian who welcomes feedback from readers. Reach her at AEParshall@aol.com.