A Lecture, Or Essay On the most efficacious means of Preserving The Lives Of Shipwrecked Sailors And The Shipwreck

CM CO The difficult and dangerous services requiring the use of a life-boat are two : the one for assistance to stranded vessels, when the case of distress is not far from the shore, and the aid of oars only necessary ; the other, when the relief required is at a distance from the land, and can be effected only by a powerful boat under canvas. The indispensable qualities of a boat to be employed in services of imminent danger, as a life-boat, are buoyancy in construction, power to resist upsetting, and prevent sinking-, although filled with water : in addition to these properties, those required for the rescue of persons at a distance from the shore, it is indispensable for them to go well to windward. I will commence with the boat known by the name of Great- head’s Life-boat, similar to the one supplied to Cromer : it is excellent at the entrance of a harbour, and for going out with the receding tide to a vessel on a bar, as at Sunderland, where there is no difficulty in launching, nor much propelling power required, or the aid of canvas necessary ; but from a flat shore it is entirely unfit, from its unwieldy size and weight rendering it so difficult to be conveyed to a point of danger ; added to this, its lofty stem exposes it so much to the force of the wind and waves, as to make it utterly impracticable to force it through a high surf. It differs also from the form of boats peculiar to all the coast I have seen, which is of the first importance for a life-boat, that is, to resemble in structure as much as possible those which the pilots and beachmen are accustomed to, and have great confidence in, not only because it is necessary to humour the prejudices of men whose services are required, but because whatever is calculated to stimulate and draw forth their exertions, at the same time tends to in- crease their confidence, and must in proportion increase the chance of saving life from shipwreck. The next description of boats to which I call your attention, are those supplied to some stations on the coast of Norfolk (as Win- terton, &c.) They are extremely well adapted, after communication is gained, to be hauled off by the rope, for saving the people from a stranded vessel, but never were any (with the exception of Great- head’s) more unadapted to the stations where they are placed—that of going to the assistance of vessels in distress, that may have struck upon a distant shoal, particularly that extensive one called Happis- burgh Sand, opposite to those stations, about the distance of nine miles