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I’ve just bought a scanner, and to celebrate I thought i might show you this
drawing of a lifeboat taken from H C Folkard’s book The Sailing Boat
This particular boat is Mr James Beeching’s winning entry for The Earl of Northumberland’s great competition to design a new lifeboat in 1850, which require a design that was self-righting, would empty itself of water and was light enough to be carried when onshore.
The merits of the many entires were weighed against a scoring scheme that place great emphasis in the boat’s sailing and rowing characteristics in all weathers, and Mr Beeching’s 36ft by 10ft 6in design with air-tight lockers under the thwarts and in the ends scored the most points. After a successful series of trials the new boats were put into use.
However, Folkard records that the lifeboat crews quickly came to distrust their self-righting ability and the design had to be modified with more bouyancy to win back their confidence.
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