i6 



best adopted. It would be an important advantage if 

 life-saving appliances could be provided to the super- 

 cession of the greater number of the boats now provided, 

 either slung on davits or stowed away on deck, without 

 adding in any considerable degree, structurally or other- 

 wise, to the dead weight at present carried on or above the 

 deck. 



Always ready. — It would be a gratuitous infliction to 

 say more on the subject of the difficulty and delay that so 

 often occurs in emergencies at sea in getting the boats 

 released, lowered, disengaged, loaded, and got clear of the 

 ship. Cases occur, as has been shown, of ships going 

 down with so-called life-rafts on them, and boats left in 

 the chocks have been sucked down with the drowning 

 people they should have saved. 



Launching. — An essential quality of any effective life- 

 saving appliance must be that it can be launched with 

 celerity. It many instances not more than five minutes 

 have elapsed between the time a ship has struck or been 

 struck and has gone down. 



The Northfleet, an outward-bound emigrant ship lying 

 at anchor near Dungeness, a few years ago, was struck 

 during a calm night by a passing steamer, and rapidly 

 filled and sank, drowning nearly the whole of the 

 passengers and crew. If the Northfleet had been provided 

 with life-saving appliances always ready, and that could 

 have been launched in a few seconds, every one of the 

 poor creatures that perished might have been saved. The 

 method of launching must depend upon the form and 

 character of the object to be lowered into the water. It 

 ought to be something made in such a manner that, 

 although admitting of the most rapid movement, will 

 require something simple and ready, yet more scientific, or 



