312 REPORT—1857. 
There must be many stations on our coasts requiring life-boats, as will 
be seen by the Wreck Chart, which shows by spots and crosses the position 
of the wrecks and damaged vessels on the coasts of the United Kingdom to 
have amounted to 987 casualties in the year 1854;—that of these, 431 were 
total wrecks, and 53 vessels sunk by collision, making the number totally lost 
484, Of vessels stranded and damaged, so as to be obliged to discharge 
their cargoes, there were 462; those by collision, 41, amounting to 503, 
making the total number of wrecks and casualties 987 vessels. The loss of © 
life, as far as can be ascertained, amounted to 1549 lives in 1854, being 560 
more than in the previous year, while the number of vessels lost was 155 more 
than in 1853. 
The tonnage of these fishing-boats amounts to 72,414 tons, and the total 
value of boats, nets and lines to £587,420,—an aggregate of fishermen, ton- 
nage and capital well deserving the attention of the Commissioners for the 
British Fisheries, as well as the aid of Her Majesty’s Government. 
This was afforded when Captain Washington, R.N., was ordered to report 
on the loss of life and damage sustained by fishing-boats in the gale of the 
19th of August, 1848. This Report was published July 1849 (pp. 579), 
giving the statistics of the Fishery and Boats ;—the Secretary, tlhe Honour- 
able B. F. Primrose, stating the desire of the Commissioners to aid in esta- 
blishing trial boats in the Fishery Districts, and a relative comparison of the 
different boats. The Report contains the drawings of sixteen boats, with two 
designed by Mr. Peake, of Woolwich Dockyard, of improved form, with the 
opinion of practical boat-builders on the alterations proposed. 
There was also a tabular statement of the dimensions and particulars of 
thirty boats, affording information to enable fishermen to select a boat that 
would meet the requirements of each locality ; but as no attempt was made to 
build a trial fishing-boat, or other improvement, it is doubtful if much good 
has been effected in improving our fishing-boats; and only at two places have 
I found that the Report was at all known to the fishermen, while a few weeks’ 
observation of a trial boat might have saved some of the 124 boats and 100 
lives. 
AS TO LIFE-BOATS. 
In 1849, the Tyne Life-boat upset and drowned 20 pilots, which led the 
Duke of Northumberland to offer a prize of 100 guineas for the best model 
of a Life-boat. Captain Washington, R.N., and a Committee of Naval Offi- 
cers and Surveyors, having considered the merits of 280 models and plans, 
awarded the prize to Mr. Beeching’s model, accompanying it by a report. 
His Grace the Duke of Northumberland gratuitously circulated thirteen 
hundred copies of this Report, accompanied by plans, drawings, and detailed 
descriptions of the best life-boats—including those of a 30-feet boat, designed 
by Mr. J. Peake, “in which, profiting by the experience gained in the ex- 
amination of the models, all the best qualities of a life-boat should be com- 
bined.” The Lords of the Admiralty ordered that a life-boat according to 
those lines should be built in Her Majesty’s Dockyard, Woolwich. 
A catalogue or tabular return was furnished of the 280 models and 'plans 
competing for the prize, giviug their dimensions, weight and cost. Thirty 
are described in detail ; and then published plans and sections of the internal 
life-boat arrangements and disposition of buoyancy of thirteen boats, com- 
mencing with Beeching’s Prize Model, which is stated to be ballasted with two 
tons of water and half-a-ton of iron keel, by means of which, and raised air- 
cases in bow and stern, it was stated she would right herself when upset. 
There are other life-boat constructors who have spent much time and 
money in completing their inventions, without being able to bring them into 
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