326 REPORT—1857. 
STANDARD FOR SHIPS’ LIFE-BOATS. 
The necessity of establishing a Standard for Ships’ Life- Boats, and the 
organization of a Committee to investigate the question as to Improved 
Means of Lowering Ships’ Boats, and providing Life-preserving Appa- 
ratus on board British Ships. 
The first efforts to establish ships’ life-boats were made by the late George 
Palmer, Esq., M.P. for Essex, in 1828, when in command of East India 
Company’s ships, on board which, and by the National Life-Boat Institution, 
they were adopted. Mr. Palmer circulated a sketch and specification of his 
boat and fittings, the extra buoyancy consisting of air-cases and casks in the 
wings, bow and stern, and under the thwarts. She was built as a whale- 
boat, sharp at both ends, so as to be carried at davits with convenience. 
The second effort, in 1850, was the adoption of corrugated metal boats, 
patented by Mr. Francis of New York. These are largely employed by 
Government on the coast of America; and by an Act of Congress, passen- 
ger-ships are compelled to carry a certain number of these boats. 
Machinery is now being erected at Liverpool for the formation of these 
iron boats by hydraulic pressure, as well as of a ship’s quarter-boat (Pl. V.), 
and as these corrugated iron boats remain uninjured by the weather or the 
heat of the boiler, they are largely used by steamers and passenger ships. 
Of the 280 models competing for the Northumberland prize in 1851, 
Messrs. White’s, of Cowes, models have proved admirable ships’ life-boats, 
with air-compartments between bilge and gunwale. Many are in use by the 
steam companies, but, from their high cost, do not come into general use—the 
air-compartments occupying most of the space, and being difficult to repair. 
The principal life-boats now carried by steamers, passenger- and emigrant- 
ships are generally far inferior to the above, their extra buoyancy being 
merely copper or zine cylinders placed under the thwarts; these are again 
voxed in by planks. Even with this protection it appears, from much expe- 
rience, that the copper cannot be depended on for more than one year; and 
no dependence at all can be placed on the zine tube or cylinder. These air- 
cases or tubes are in most life-boats placed so high in the boat as to be of 
little effect—in fact they are only life-boats in name, and not in reality. 
The origin of this evil is to be found in one of the many inconsistencies 
in the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, some of the 580 clauses of which 
enact that any ship carrying more than ten passengers shall be provided with 
life-boats and life-belts, but in no way define the fittings and characteristics 
of the life-boats to be carried. 
The limit to passenger-ships excludes more than half the 36,000 British 
vessels, and there is no provision for the crews of the thousands of ships 
with fewer than ten passengers. 
What is more extraordinary still, there is no officially-recognized standard 
according to which the life-boat should be constructed. The Emigration 
Office has some discretionary power, but practically it has come to a mere 
question of whether the zinc tubes should be 10 or 6 inches in diameter, 
and with the owners it is a code of £ s.d. In the majority of cases, when a 
ship is taken up by Government, or a life-boat is required under the Passen- — 
gers’ Act, experience has shown the usage to be for the owner or agent to 
look for the smallest and cheapest fitted boat that will be passed as a life- 
boat under the Act, or to the fitting of the ship’s boats with the appearance 
of a life-boat by placing a light pine bulkhead on each side from the bilge 
to the thwart, with a covering at that height between them. In the best of 4 
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