210 THE SEA. 



we are not all shipowners or merchants. But how many of us have some brother or friend 

 a seafarer ! Of the writer's own direct relatives six have travelled and voyaged to very 

 far distant lands, and the friends of whom the same might be said would aggregate several 

 score. This is no uncommon case. 



The origin of the life-boat, as now understood, is of very modern date. Those who 

 would study the matter in its entirety cannot do better than consult the work* from which 

 the larger part of the material incorporated in the present chapter is derived. One of tho 

 very earliest inventors of a life-boat was Mr. Lionel Lukin, a coach-builder of Long Acre, 

 who turned his attention to the subject in 1784, from purely benevolent motives. The then 

 Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.), who knew Lukin personally, not only encouraged 

 him to test his inventions, but offered to pay the expenses. Lukin purchased a Norway 

 yawl, to the outer frame of which he added a projecting gunwale of cork, tapering from 

 nine inches amidships to very little at the bows and stern. Hollow water-tight enclosures 

 gave it great buoyancy, while ballast sufficient for stability was afforded by a heavy false 

 keel of iron. On this principle several boats were constructed, and found to be, as the 

 inventor describes them, " unimmergible." The Rev. Dr. Shairp, of Bamborough, hearing 

 of the invention, and having charge of a charity for saving life at sea, sent a boat to Lukin 

 to be made " unimmergible." This was done, and satisfactory accounts were afterwards 

 received of the altered boat, which was reported to have saved several lives in the first year 

 of its use. The Admiralty and Trinity House would have nothing to do with it, in spite 

 of the Prince of Wales' interest in the matter. It has been said that a committee is a body 

 without a conscience; it was true in those good old days. Lukin retired from business in 

 1821, and went to live at Hythe in Kent, where, ten years after, he died; the inscription 

 on his tomb in Hythe churchyard says that he was the first to build a life-boat. 



Notwithstanding Lukin's increasing efforts to bring his life-boats into general use, 

 hardly any progress had been make in their general adoption till 1789, when the Adventure, 

 of Newcastle, was wrecked at the mouth of the Tyne. While this vessel lay stranded on a 

 dangerous sand at the entrance of the river, in the midst of tremendous breakers, her crew 

 " dropped off one by one from the rigging/' only three hundred yards from the shore, and 

 in the presence of thousands of spectators. This horrible disaster led to good results, for a 

 committee was immediately appointed at a meeting of the inhabitants of South Shields, 

 and premiums offered for the best model of a life-boat " calculated to brave the dangers of 

 the sea, particularly of broken water/' From many plans submitted two were selected, 

 those of Mr. William Wouldhave and Mr. Henry Greathead. The idea of the first is said 

 to have been suggested by the following circumstance. Wouldhave had been asked to assist 

 a woman in putting a " skeel of water on her head, when he noticed that she had a piece of 

 a broken wooden dish lying in the water, which floated with the points upwards, and turning 

 it over several times, he found that it always righted itself. Greathead's model had a curved 

 instead of a straight keel, and he, as the only practical boatbuilder who had competed, was 

 awarded the premium, some of Wouldhave's ideas in regard to the use of cork being incorpo- 

 rated. This first boat, thirty feet in length, had a cork lining twelve inches thick, reaching 



* "History of the Lifc-loat and its Work," by Richard Lewis, of the Inner Temple, Esq., Secretary of the 

 National Life-boat Institution. 



