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

ADDRESS. My anxiety to promulgate the result of twenty-three years’ labour to mitigate the distresses so often attendant on storms, proceeds from other views than the mere demonstrating- that peculiar method which has originated in England, and is not only established generally on the coast of this kingdom, but on the shores of foreign countries, and stamped with my name as its author, for effecting communication with vessels stranded on a lee-shore, in the most violent gales of wind: also, the means of enabling life-boats, or other boats, to be forced through the most raging surf by people from the shore to the assistance of vessels in distress at a distance from the land, which I have likewise had the happiness of producing-, and bringing into use. As to the former object, I am proud and thankful to be able to say that success has already attended my plan in seventy-six cases; and with regard to the utility of the latter, in my mind, scarcely less important service, I am most highly gratified, because it has overcome a difficulty attendant on a flat shore that had hitherto defied the greatest exertions, and has proved able to effect with certainty and facility the forcing boats through the most raging surf, thereby not only saving the lives of persons who otherwise must inevitably have perished, but also the vessels and their cargoes. Pleasing as these considerations are, I will not deny that I have still more personal, and consequently more interested motives in laying these subjects before the public. I feel that the thread of my existence is already far worn, and I am therefore desirous, before it is entirely broken, solemnly to declare, in the presence of this distinguished meet- ing and my country, and to afford every proof in my power for the truth of the fact, that the invention, as well as the promulgation of the plans in question, originated wholly with myself. A declaration so bordering- upon egotism will, I hope, be excused from the attacks made to wrest