Description of § secure Boat, or Life Boat. 263 



lids, to open at the top of the different partitions in the 

 holds, as fancy or utility may require; or part of them may 

 be filled with cork shavings, and by that means, if the boat 

 should happen to fill by any accident, she cannot sink. 



In the boat I have altered for government, the balancfi 

 bodies (if the interior of the boat was filled with water) 

 would exclude as much water, between the inside of the 

 boat and ihe outside, as is ecjual to a bodv of water of one 

 ton I7cwt. 2qr5., which is a great deal more than the 

 weight of men that will go in her, consequently they can, 

 run no risk whatever of being drowned; and even if she had 

 a hole through her bottom, she would always keep a suffi- 

 cient height out of the water either for rowing or sailing. 



But the main object is to make her sail and row much 

 faster than other boats ; and both on calculation and trial 

 my boat will be found to sail much faster and with much 

 less danger than other boats. 



I now come to the advantage of rowing. — As the balance 

 sides project a foot beyond the resisting part in the water, 

 there is that leverage on the boat (over a common one), and 

 also the same in the length of the loom of the oar, that is 

 in the inside from the gunwale of the boat, which allows 

 the whole of the oar to be lengthened, and by that means • 

 it describes a larger circle in the water, and makes a longer 

 pull : the oars for the government boat I have made are 

 lengthened from 14 to 18 feet. 



llie experiment of having two spars fixed at a distance 

 from a boat's gunwale, and the oars to work from them, 

 hfs often been tried and found to answer, but this has a 

 geat advantage over that method. 



There is another advantage or property which this boat 



las, she cannot roll at sea, but always keeps a level position 



is far as the surface of the sea will allow ; she may heel but 



.fioi roll, as the balances arc always ready to catch cither 



Jway, and the opposite one assists the other by its weight out 



'y of water and gravitation; neither can this boat pitch like 



another, for the balance bodies being out of the water, and 



the breadth of six feet only in the water, it can only act 



with a gravity on the water, equal to a boat of the weight 



R4 of 



