Sometimes when reading local histories and commercial records of Ireland, I have found references to a vehicle called the chaise-marine. I have now discovered that this was a rude sort of one-horsed low cart, with a barred "float" constructed upon the back ends of the shafts, so that the point of balance was over the hubs of the wheels; the hubs themselves were made of solid wooden discs about twenty inches in diameter. At one period it was the common conveyance for moving merchandise and goods, but it was occasionally used for parties of pleasure.
In Hibernia Curiosa, "A Letter from a Gentleman in Dublin to his Friend in Kent," written in 1764, it is explained how this carriage was adapted for what we moderns would call a joy-ride, by the simple expedient of laying mats on the level (marked "L. L." in the sketch) for the "commonality."
It is added that for the "gentler sort of people" a bed was used. Thus equipped, the chairmarine was the "drollest, merriest curricle you ever saw," and the writer was "infinitely diverted" at meeting many of these "featherbed parties" coming out of Dublin as he went up to it after landing at Dunlary. Ten or a dozen people would be with every vehicle, which held six, and they rode on it in turns, the rate of progress seldom being more than foot-pace.
The Irish Times, November 24th, 1930.