From the very beginning

From the very beginning, Gustave Trouvé of Paris, inventor of the battery-electric boat in 1881 thought up cruising ideas! He fitted his electric boats with a frontal headlamp, another of his many inventions, for nocturnal cruising on the Seine. One evening, he also equipped the electric boat that he kept at Chatou on the River Seine, miles upstream from his Paris workshop, with hundreds of coloured luminous electric lights, renaming the boat “The Floral Island” and cruised past to the delight and applause of his merrymaking friends, among them the Impressionist painters Monet and Renoir and the writer Guy de Maupassant! A sort of floating Christmas tree. Why not do the same.