Ice boat?

I am sorry to appear likely very silly, but prompted by a cartoon that I saw, have any of you heard of someone in Arctic or Antarctic waters, needing to travel, having a motor but not a boat, making emergency transport by attaching an outboard motor to a small ice-floe?

See Project Habakkuk - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

 

I've heard of icebergs being towed, but that's about the extent of moving ice I've seen. You can put any dream into a cartoon. Some of those dreams become reality!

 

Not until now...
Why do you ask?

 

I imagine, given descriptions of that bit of water racing around Antarctica, that it might well be a lot safer to attempt this in the Arctic, unless you kept reasonably close to shore.

But that aside, I could foresee difficulty in just knowing how to direct the thrust from any motor so a random chunk of ice could hold a course because they aren't going to be terribly regular underwater. Those WW2 proposals were always for a ship and not just something found.

 

Not only that, the water was mixed with sawdust before it was frozen. It wasn't pure ice - it was really a cellulose fiber composite structure with a water ice matrix.

 

Ice carousels are a ' thing' at the moment and use outboards for propulsion, but as other posters have pointed out there are significant directional issues in open water.

 

You might be better off with paddles than an outboard.

 

One would imagine that using brush coir might have some potential for pycrete and address the issue of using trees.

 

Possibly, although large quantities of sawdust are created as waste, and it would be a good use for recycled wood. So no trees need be felled for pycrete production.

 

the allies in WWII looked into making aircraft carriers out of pycrete with onboard refrigeration.