SURF-OAR. 



715 



small mortar of five and a half inches calibre is 

 usually employed to bring about a connection 

 between the ship and the shore ; this projects 

 a twenty-pound iron ball with a line attached 

 across and over the wreck ; or, at times, the 



line is cast over the vessel by means of a rock- 

 et. By this line a heavy hawser is drawn out 

 to the wreck, and made secure. With the 

 hawser a light but stout line also is dragged 

 out to the ship. The two rings at the ends of 



THE LIFE OR SURF CAR, 



Which conveys its passengers safely through the breakers of the sea when life-boats are of no avail. It gave safe transit in 

 winter tempest on our coast, from the ships Ayrshire, 101 ; Georgia, 271 ; Cornelius Grinnell, 234; Chauncy Jerome, 70; 

 and from other vessels, in all nearly 4,000 people. This picture shows the Life-Car on its first errand to save the ship- 

 wrecked when beyond the reach of any other aid. Invented by Captain Douglass Ottinger, U. S. E. Marine. (This in- 

 vention is not patented, but left free to be used everywhere.) 



the ropes attached to the life-car are slipped 

 upon the hawser. The shore end of the line is 

 then made fast to the outer end of the car, and 

 another line to the other, which is played out 



as the car is drawn along the hawser out to the 

 distressed vessel. When the car is brought to 

 the ship's deck, the lid is opened, and the pas- 

 sengers placed within, lying close in the low 



A cannon-ball, with a rope attached, thrown across a water-logged or sinking ship during a gale too fierce for a life-boat to be 

 used; the relief- vessel making a breakwater of the wreck, rides by a hawser in its lee, while the Life-Car is kept in tran- 

 sit to save the people in peril 



aperture ; and the car is then drawn ashore, 

 while the men on the deck hold it taut and 

 steady with the outer line. 

 The services which this simple but incal- 



culably beneficent contrivance has rendered 

 have been signal and incontestable. Thousands 

 of souls have been preserved by its aid where 

 no other means of rescue could have availed. 



