In previous chapters enough has been
told, I think, to prove that our lifeboats deserve
earnest and thoughtful attention, not only as regards
their work, but in reference to their details of construction.
It has been said that the lifeboat possesses special
qualities which distinguish it from all other boats.
Chief among these are the self-righting and self-emptying
principles. Stability, resulting from breadth
of beam, etcetera, will do much to render a boat safe
in rough seas and tempestuous weather, but when a
boat has to face mighty rollers which turn it up until
it stands straight on end, like a rearing horse, and
even tumble it right over, or when it has to plunge
into horrible maelstroms which seethe, leap, and fume
in the mad contention of cross seas, no device that
man has yet fallen upon will save it from turning
keel up and throwing its contents into the water.
Instead therefore, of attempting to
build a boat which cannot upset, men have deemed it
wiser to attempt the construction of one which will
not remain in that position, but which will, of necessity,
right itself. The end aimed at has been achieved,
and the boat now in use by the Lifeboat Institution
is absolutely perfect in this respect. What more
could be desired in any boat than that, after being
upset, it should right itself in a few seconds,
and empty itself of water in less than one minute?
A boat which does not right itself
when overturned is only a lifeboat so long as it maintains
its proper position on the water.
Let its self-emptying and buoyant
qualities be ever so good, you have only to upset
it to render it no better than any other boat; indeed,
in a sense, it is worse than other boats, because
it leads men to face danger which they would not dare
to encounter in an ordinary boat.
Doubtless, lifeboats on the non-self-righting
principle possess great stability, and are seldom
overturned; nevertheless they occasionally are, and
with fatal results. Here is one example.
In the month of January, 1865, the Liverpool lifeboat,
when out on service, was upset, and seven men of her
crew were drowned. This was not a self-righting
boat, and it did not belong to the Lifeboat Institution,
most of whose boats are now built on the self-righting
principle. Moreover, the unfortunate men had
not put on lifebelts. It may be added that the
men who work the boats of the Institution are not
allowed to go off without their cork lifebelts on.
Take another case. On the 4th
January, 1857, the Point of Ayr lifeboat, when under
sail in a gale, upset at a distance from the land.
The accident was seen from the shore, but no aid
could be rendered, and the whole boat’s crew thirteen
in number were drowned. This boat
was considered a good lifeboat, and doubtless it was
so in many respects, but it was not a self-righting
one. Two or three of the poor fellows were seen
clinging to the keel for twenty minutes, by which time
they became exhausted, were washed off, and, having
no lifebelts on, perished.
Again in February, 1858, the Southwold
lifeboat a large sailing boat, esteemed
one of the finest in the kingdom, but not on the self-righting
principle went out for exercise, and was
running before a heavy surf with all sail set, when
she suddenly ran on the top of a sea, turned broadside
to the waves, and was upset. The crew in this
case were fortunately near the shore, had on their
lifebelts, and, although some of them could not swim,
were all saved no thanks, however, to their
boat, which remained keel up but three unfortunate
gentlemen who had been permitted to go off in the
boat without lifebelts, and one of whom was a good
swimmer, lost their lives.
Let it be noted here that the above
three instances of disaster occurred in the day time,
and the contrast of the following case will appear
all the stronger.
One very dark and stormy night in
October, 1858, the small lifeboat of Dungeness put
off through a heavy sea to a wreck three-quarters of
a mile from the shore. Eight stout men of the
coastguard composed her crew. She was a self-righting,
self-emptying boat, belonging to the Lifeboat Institution.
The wreck was reached soon after midnight, and found
to have been abandoned. The boat, therefore,
returned towards the shore. Now, there is a
greater danger in rowing before a gale than in rowing
against it. For the first half mile all went
well, though the sea was heavy and broken, but, on
crossing a deep channel between two shoals, the little
lifeboat was caught up and struck by three heavy seas
in succession. The coxswain lost command of the
rudder, and she was carried away before a sea, broached
to, and upset, throwing her crew out of her. Immediately
she righted herself, cleared herself of water, and
was brought up by her anchor which had fallen out when
she was overturned. The crew meanwhile having
on lifebelts, floated and swam to the boat, caught
hold of the life-lines festooned round her sides,
clambered into her, cut the cable, and returned to
the shore in safety! What more need be said in
favour of the self-righting boats?
The self-emptying principle is quite
equal to the self-righting in importance.
In every case of putting off
to a wreck in a gale, a lifeboat ships a great deal
of water. In most cases she fills more than once.
Frequently she is overwhelmed by tons of water by every
sea. A boat full of water cannot advance, therefore
baling becomes necessary; but baling, besides being
very exhausting work, is so slow that it would be
useless labour in most cases. Besides, when men
have to bale they cannot give that undivided attention
to the oars which is needful. To overcome this
difficulty the self-emptying plan was devised.
As, I doubt not, the reader is now
sufficiently interested to ask the questions, How
are self-righting and self-emptying accomplished?
I will try to throw some light on these subjects.
First, as to self-righting.
You are aware, no doubt, that the buoyancy of our
lifeboat is due chiefly to large air-cases at the ends,
and all round the sides from stem to stern.
The accompanying drawing and diagrams will aid us
in the description. On the opposite page you
have a portrait of, let us say, a thirty-three feet,
ten-oared lifeboat, of the Royal National Lifeboat
Institution, on its transporting carriage, ready for
launching, and, on page 95, two diagrams representing
respectively a section and a deck view of the same
(Figures 1, 2, and 3).
The breadth of this boat is eight
feet; its stowage-room sufficient for thirty passengers,
besides its crew of twelve men forty-two
in all. It is double-banked; that is, each of
its five banks, benches, or thwarts, accommodates
two rowers sitting side by side. The lines festooned
round the side dip into the water, so that anyone
swimming alongside may easily grasp them, and in the
middle part of the boat just where the
large wheels come in the engraving two of
the lines are longer than the others, so that a man
might use them as stirrups, and thus be enabled to
clamber into the boat even without assistance.
The rudder descends considerably below the keel to
give it more power and has to be raised
when the boat is being launched.
The shaded parts of the diagrams show
the position and form of the air-cases which prevent
a lifeboat from sinking. The white oblong space
in Figure 2 is the free space available for crew and
passengers. In Figure 3 is seen the depth to
which the air-chambers descend, and the height to
which the bow and stern-chambers rise.
It is to these large air-chambers
in bow and stern, coupled with great sheer or
rise fore and aft of gunwale, and a very
heavy keel, that the boat owes its self-righting power.
The two air-chambers are rounded on the top.
Now, it is obvious that if you were to take a model
of such a boat, turn it upside down on a table, and
try to make it rest on its two rounded air-chambers,
you would encounter as much difficulty as did the
friends of Columbus when they sought to make an egg
stand on its end. The boat would infallibly
fall to one side or the other. In the water
the tendency is precisely the same, and that tendency
is increased by the heavy iron keel, which drags the
boat violently round to its right position.
The self-righting principle was discovered at
all events for the first time exhibited at
the end of last century, by the Reverend James Bremner,
of Orkney. He first suggested in the year 1792
that an ordinary boat might be made self-righting
by placing two watertight casks in the head and sternsheets
of it, and fastening three hundredweight of iron to
the keel. Afterwards he tried the experiment
at Leith, and with such success that in 1810 the Society
of Arts voted him a silver medal and twenty guineas.
But nothing further was done until half a century
later, when twenty out of twenty-four pilots lost
their lives by the upsetting of the non-self-righting
Shields lifeboat.
Then (1850) the late Duke of Northumberland
offered a prize of 100 guineas for the best lifeboat
that could be produced. No fewer than 280 models
and drawings were sent in, and the plans, specifications,
and descriptions of these formed five folio manuscript
volumes! The various models were in the shape
of pontoons, catamarans or rafts, north-country
cobles, and ordinary boats, slightly modified.
The committee appointed to decide on their respective
merits had a difficult task to perform. After
six months’ careful, patient investigation and
experiment, they awarded the prize to Mr James Beeching,
of Great Yarmouth. Beeching’s boat, although
the best, was not, however, deemed perfect.
The committee therefore set Mr James
Peake, one of their number, and assistant master-shipwright
at Woolwich Dockyard, to incorporate as many as possible
of the good qualities of all the other models with
Beeching’s boat. From time to time various
important improvements have been made, and the result
is the present magnificent boat of the Institution,
by means of which hundreds of lives are saved every
year.
The self-discharge of water from a
lifeboat is not so easy to explain. It will be
the more readily comprehended if the reader understands,
and will bear in remembrance, the physical fact that
water will, and must, find its level. That is no
portion of water, small or great, in tub, pond, or
sea, can for a moment remain above its flat and level
surface, except when forced into motion, or commotion.
Left to itself it infallibly flattens out, becomes
calm, lies still in the lowest attainable position in
other words, finds its level. Bearing this in
mind, let us look again at Figure 3.
The dotted double line about the middle
of the boat, extending from stem to stern, represents
the floor of the boat, on which the men’s
feet rest when standing or sitting in it. It
also represents, or very nearly so, the waterline
outside, that is, the depth to which the boat will
sink when afloat, manned and loaded. Therefore,
the boat’s floor and the ocean
surface are on the same level. Observe
that! The space between the floor and the keel
is filled up with cork or other ballast. Now,
there are six large holes in the boat’s floor each
hole six inches in diameter into which
are fitted six metal tubes, which pass down by the
side of the cork ballast, and right through the bottom
of the boat itself; thus making six large openings
into the sea.
“But hallo!” you exclaim,
“won’t the water from below rush up through
these holes and fill the boat?”
It will indeed rush up into these
holes, but it will not fill the boat because it will
have found its level the level of ocean on
reaching the floor. Well, besides having reached
its level, the water in the tubes has reached six
valves, which will open downwards to let water out,
but which won’t open upwards to let it in.
Now, suppose a huge billow topples into the boat
and fills it quite full, is it not obvious that all
the water in the boat stands above the ocean’s
level being above the boat’s floor?
Like a wise element, it immediately seeks its own
level by the only mode of egress the discharging
tubes; and when it has found its level, it has also
found the floor of the boat. In other words,
it is all gone! moreover, it rushes out so violently
that a lifeboat, filled to overflowing, frees itself,
as I have already said, in less than one minute!
The buoyancy, therefore, of
a lifeboat is not affected for more than a few seconds
by the tons of water which occasionally and frequently
break into her. To prove this, let me refer
you again to the account of the Constance, given by
its gallant coxswain, as recorded in the third chapter.
He speaks of the lifeboat being “buried,”
“sunk” by the wave that burst over the
bow of the Stanley, and “immediately,”
he adds, “the men made a grasp for the spare
oars!” There is no such remark as “when
we recovered ourselves,” etcetera. The
sinking and leaping to the surface were evidently
the work of a few seconds; and this is indeed the
case, for when the force that sinks a lifeboat is removed,
she rises that instant to the surface like a cork,
and when she tumbles over she recovers herself with
the agility of an acrobat!
The transporting-carriage is a most
essential part of a lifeboat establishment, because
wrecks frequently take place at some distance from
a station, and prompt assistance is of the utmost importance
in all cases of rescue. It is drawn by horses,
and, with its exceedingly broad and strong wheels,
can be dragged over any kind of road or across soft
sand. It is always backed into the surf so deep
that the boat may be launched from it, with her crew
seated, and the oars out, ready to pull with might
and main the instant the plunge is made. These
first strokes of a lifeboat’s crew are of immense
importance. Want of union or energy on the part
of steersman or crew at this critical point may be
fatal. The boat must be made to cut the breakers
end-on, so as to prevent her turning broadside on
and being rolled back on the beach. Even after
these initial strokes have been made successfully,
there still remains the possibility of an unusually
monstrous wave hurling the boat back end over end.
The boat resting on its carriage on
the sands (Figure 1) shows the relative position of
the two. It will be seen, from that position,
that a very slight tip will suffice to cause the bow
of the boat to drop towards the sea. As its
keel rests on rollers, comparatively little force
is required to launch it. Such force is applied
by means of ropes attached to the stern, passing through
pulleys at the outer end of the carriage, so that
people on shore haul the ropes inland in order to
force the boat off its carriage seaward.
Once the boat has got fairly over
the surf and out upon the wild sea, her progress is
comparatively safe, simple tugging against wind and
sea being all that has to be done until the wreck
is reached, where dangers of another kind await her.
I have now shown that the great qualities
of our lifeboat are buoyancy, or
a tendency not to sink; self-righting power,
or inability to remain upside down; self-emptying
power, or a capacity to discharge any water that may
get into it; and stability, or a tendency not
to upset. The last quality I shall refer to,
though by no means the least, is strength.
From what has been already written
about lifeboats being hurled against wrecks and rocks,
it must be evident that the strength of ordinary boats
would not suffice.
In order to give them the requisite
strength of frame for their tremendous warfare, they
are built of the best Honduras mahogany, on what is
known as the diagonal plan that is, the
boat has two distinct “skins” of planking,
one set of planks being laid on in a diagonal position
to the others. Moreover, these planks run from
one gunwale round under the boat to the other gunwale,
and have a complete layer of prepared canvas between
them. Thus great strength and elasticity are
combined, so that the boat can stand an inconceivable
amount of battering on wreckage, rocks, or sand, without
being destroyed.
That this is really so I will endeavour
to prove by referring in the next chapter to a particular
instance in which the great strength of one of our
lifeboats was powerfully illustrated.
It may be added, in conclusion, that
the oars of a lifeboat are short, and so made as to
combine the greatest possible strength with lightness.
They are fastened to the gunwale by short pieces of
rope, and work in a moveable iron crutch on an iron
thole-pin. Each boat is provided with a set
of spare oars. Her equipment of compass, cables,
grapnels, anchors, etcetera, is, as may be supposed,
very complete, and she rides upon the storm in a rather
gay dress of red, white, and blue, in order that she
may be readily distinguished from other boats her
lower parts being white, her upper sides blue, and
her line of “fender” all round being scarlet.