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‘It is impossible to assign to any one person the merit of inventing the Life-Boat’
Based on a 1910 Royal Society of Arts lecture, Sir John Cameron-Lamb’s small book The Life-boat and its Work was published in the following year, and sold for the now-laughable sum of one shilling. I promised the gentlemen who look after Southwold’s historic Alfred Corry I’d scan this book, and so here’s the first instalment!
To see the rest of this series:
The Life-boat and its Work, a history from 1911 – part I
The Life-boat and its Work, a history from 1911 – part II
The Life-boat and its Work, a history from 1911 – part III
A shilling was cheap but not a 'laughable sum' – a 1910 shilling is about equivalent to £3 now.
5p (1/-) seems an amusingly small amount now. But I wonder about the calculation – if a shilling now is worth £3 or so, I thought I'd find out what the price of a pint was. I don't have a 1910 price to hand, but in 1914, it turns out a pint of beer typically cost 3d. http://www.xs4all.nl/~patto1ro/ukstats.htm
That's a can of worms! Some things have got more expensive, some cheaper. I got the figure here: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/, so it is fairly authoritative. At that time, a pint of porter cost 1 3/4d (a penny three-farthings, wasn't money so much prettier then?) and a loaf of bread cost 2 1/2d (tuppence ha'penny). On that basis, the book cost nearly seven pints – say 20 quid!
There was a famous strike in 1910. Women chainmakers were paid a pittance – 5s for a 50 hour week – regarded even then as outrageous. They were awarded a rise to 11s a week by the Chain Trade Board, but they had to go on strike before the factory owners would pay up.
Can't wait for the next installment.
My friend, Joe Conboy, had the job back in the 1970's of doing the restoration of an old lifeboat for the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia.
It turned out to be the "model" ehibited at the Philadelphia Centenial exposition of 1876 of the then standar British lifboat.
The stylle was copied for the U.S. Lifesaving service.
That boat is now in a museum in Philadelphia.
Gday Ed,
I am a very old friend of Joe Conboys and have been searching for him for 19 years. I would help him sail boats back om occassion to be shown at the Annapolis Md, boat show. This is dating back to about 1975- 78.
Neptune was and still is my favorite Motor sailer ever.
Cordially,
Bruce Kollinger
Bayview NSW
Australia
exflaman@yahoo.com