Russian ekranoplan. The wings weren't long enough to get the plane out of ground effect, but that's actually a good thing for them. Since they're in ground effect, they're a lot more efficient than planes and they were able to take much higher payloads than normal planes, but since they also weren't on the water, they were much faster than moving stuff by shipping. Actually kind of ingenious, if you think about it.

I think there were a few big disadvantages to them, though. Hard to get stable and I don't think they'd work too well out on the open ocean if the surge got very high.