Some of the coolest campers in the world aren’t ones built in a factory, but put together by the inspiring minds of singular inventors, engineers, and dreamers. These one-off builds are full of imagination, and often are built to a level of durability not found in a typical camper. I found what is perhaps one of the coolest vintage campers in America, and it’s a weird camper-boat combination that was designed and built by a Douglas Aircraft engineer. But I will need your help.
The camper-boat is one of the more fascinating niches in the RV world. These travel trailers and motorhomes are nominally regular road-going campers, but they also have a hull for camping out on a lake. In theory, it’s supposed to be the best of both worlds. It’s a camper that can camp anywhere.
RV history is absolutely full of these things. Like the idea of the flying car, the camper-boat never seems to die or really be particularly successful, either. Back in the 1950s, a camper buyer could hitch their car up to a Kom-Pak Sportsman, a streamlined fiberglass camper that had a boat for its roof. This camper had some spectacular innovations for its day. It was a fiberglass design before fiberglass went mainstream, and the roof boat was an interesting touch, too. Yet, they were produced only for a few years.
In the 1960s, the Trailorboat Engineering Company gave the Kom-Pak Sportsman formula another go, and like the Sportsman, the Trailorboat didn’t last very long on the market, either.
Other attempts to sell a floating camper include the CAMI Terra Wind, a motorhome that was marketed as being an amphibious yacht, the Delta Van Cruiser, which was a floating conversion van, and the Ship-A-Shore Combo Cruiser, the camper-boat built by women. None of these ideas sold in anything resembling high numbers.
What’s amazing is that you can buy an amphibious camper today. In 2023, I wrote about the CaraBoat, above, a camper-boat that’s built in Michigan. The company is apparently still operating today. Yet, I haven’t seen a single one at any RV show or on the road.
In the past, some of our watercraft-loving readers have reached out to me with their own theories as to why these ideas haven’t taken off, and the prevailing theory is that a camper that is a boat is going to be lackluster at both jobs. I can see it. Some of these camper-boat designs require people to climb ladders or walk up high steps to get over the hull when camping on dry land, and, on paper, they have spec sheets that are less impressive than the average pontoon boat. Of course, then you have the fact that you’re combining RV maintenance and boat maintenance into the same vehicle.
A Plane Engineer Makes A Boat-Camper
Still, this has never stopped countless dreamers from trying to make travel trailers be more than just a travel trailer.
The potential downsides of a camper-boat also aren’t stopping me from being thoroughly impressed with what I’ve found on Facebook Marketplace. This camper, which can be found in Morro Bay, California, is something I have never seen before.
The seller gives this for a description:
1955 Vintage amphibious camper trailer. Camper turns into a boat that floats on the water and is driven by an outboard motor that is attached where the rear bumper goes. Upper rear section is removable and awning can attach in its place.
According to a data plate found in the vehicle, the camper was most likely built by one J.J. Pal. Under Pal’s name is an engraving saying “8-20-55.” The best guess anyone has is that the set of numbers indicates when the camper was finished, dating the rig to 1955. The seller says that J.J. Pal worked for the Douglas Aircraft Company and built the camper like an airplane.
This part is more than believable, given that the camper features what appears to be a riveted aluminum construction. The level of detail is incredible, with beautiful riveted metal inside and outside. Like an airplane, the trailer seems to use structural skin with some interior reinforcement. This is different from most campers, which use an internal framing that forms a skeleton.
The camper is not complete, but you can sort of see what it must have been like in its prime. The covered section of the camper-boat has a pair of benches that would have likely functioned as bedding at nighttime.
The rear of the camper appears to have held what cooking facilities might have existed in the rear, as well as what could have been an area to lounge under the sun while on the lake. Presumably, since this area is under a giant removable roof panel, J.J. Pal probably removed the roof panel and maybe left it at home before launching this thing at the lake.
Photos in the listing show a Sea King 5 outboard motor. So far as I can tell, these outboards were sold by Montgomery Ward between the early 1930s and the early 1960s and were built by Gale Products, a division of the Outboard Marine Corporation. This outboard would have made 5 HP when it was new. If J.J. Pal used this on the water, it would have had to have been a perfectly calm lake. If this outboard is original to the camper-boat, it supports the claim that it was built in 1955.
Sadly, the trail goes cold from here. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks digging deep for any sort of aircraft engineer named “J.J. Pal” and have found exactly nothing. I suspect that whoever J.J. Pal is, they abbreviated their name for the data plate on the camper. Without knowing the rest of their name, finding them would likely be extraordinarily difficult.
I have been in contact with the seller of the camper, and he was unable to tell me anything more about the camper or its history. If you search the Internet for this camper, you’ll see that it last appeared on Instagram in 2023, and it was in the same condition back then as it is now. So, the current owner doesn’t appear to have done a lot with it.
If you like what you see here, the seller wants $18,000 for the camper. However, it’s been for sale for nearly a month now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you could negotiate that down.
Good Bones For Your Own Build
I think what is here is a great base to make your own camper out of. Even if you never take this thing out on water, it looks artsy and like no other camper on this planet. A fresh coat of paint alone would make this look properly snazzy, and it wouldn’t be hard at all to turn it into a cute weekend camper.
At the very least, I love that someone built this thing. It looks like someone had some big ideas and then went through what was probably some painstaking work to turn it into a reality. I bet this camper looked awesome when it was new and shiny. Sadly, I suppose we can only imagine it because we don’t know anything more.
I hate leaving a story unfinished, yet here we are. If you happen to know anything about this camper or J.J. Pal, please drop me a line at mercedes@theautopian.com
Top graphic image: Carl H
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