Mr Murray on saving Lives in Cases of Shipwreck. 1215 
it is difficult so to manage the required elevation, that the para- 
bolic curve be adjusted to the distance and position. In a re- 
cent instance, off Whitby, the shot in the first experiment fell 
short, and in the second the rope broke. 
The disastrous circumstance of a shipwreck off the coast of 
the Isle of Man, (in which the unfortunate crew and passen- 
gers, to the number of about thirty, were consigned to the 
watery abyss, at a distance from the shore, not exceeding fifty 
to sixty yards,) first led me to consider the practicability of 
using the common musket in like cases, and where the distance 
was not considerable. 
I could enumerate many instances of shipwreck, where the 
means now proposed would have been happily efficient, as at 
Aberdeen, Montrose, &c. 
In my first experiments in the summer of 1817, made in the 
Isle of Man, with Captain Garbett, It. N., and several other 
gentlemen, a musket bullet was employed, to which whip-cord 
was fastened, for it occurred to me that whip-cord might be 
strong enough to bear a log-line, and this last to carry a rope 
on board. In all my experiments, however, the cord broke, 
and ihe like issue took place with silk, catgut, and hair-cord. 
I found that the string, &c. snapped within the barrel. I pre- 
sumed, that if a substance could be found of sufficient power 
to carry the ball beyond the orifice, it would finally succeed, 
but every experiment had similar terminations. 
Towards the close of last autumn, I made experiments of a 
different kind, and with highly successful results, and since that 
period they have been repeated with the same success. 
Arrows of hickory or ash, loosely fitting the calibre of the 
musket, are discharged with gunpowder, the charge being rather 
less than the usual quantity. The arrows are three or four 
inches longer than the barrel of the musket, and are shod with 
iron at the point, having an eye, through which the line is 
threaded. The lower end enters a socket, which must be in 
complete contact with the wadding of the piece. 
gun, if it were not prevented by a loosely suspended valve, which opens to per- 
mit the passage of the charge, but immediately closes, and hinders the barrel from 
being choaked by the retrograde discharge from the rocket.— D. B. 
