Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851. Various

      SOME ACCOUNT OF FRANCIS'S LIFE-BOATS AND LIFE-CARS

BY JACOB ABBOTT

      THE engraving at the head of this article represents the operation of transporting the officers and crew of a wrecked vessel to the shore, by means of one of the Life-Cars invented by Mr. Joseph Francis for this purpose. A considerable appropriation was made recently by Congress, to establish stations along the coast of New Jersey and Long Island—as well as on other parts of the Atlantic seaboard—at which all the apparatus necessary for the service of these cars, and of boats, in cases where boats can be used, may be kept. These stations are maintained by the government, with the aid and co-operation of the Humane Society—a benevolent association the object of which is to provide means for rescuing and saving persons in danger of drowning—and also of the New York Board of Underwriters, a body, which, as its name imports, represents the principal Marine Insurance Companies—associations having a strong pecuniary interest in the saving of cargoes of merchandize, and other property, endangered in a shipwreck. These three parties, the Government, the Humane Society, and the Board of Underwriters, combine their efforts to establish and sustain these stations; though we can not here stop to explain the details of the arrangement by which this co-operation is effected, as we must proceed to consider the more immediate subject of this article, which is the apparatus and the machinery itself, by which the lives and property are saved. In respect to the stations, however, we will say that it awakens very strong and very peculiar emotions in the mind, to visit one of them on some lonely and desolate coast, remote from human dwellings, and to observe the arrangements and preparations that have been made in them, all quietly awaiting the dreadful emergency which is to call them into action. The traveler stands for example on the southern shore of the island of Nantucket, and after looking off over the boundless ocean which stretches in that direction without limit or shore for thousands of miles, and upon the surf rolling in incessantly on the beach, whose smooth expanse is dotted here and there with the skeleton remains of ships that were lost in former storms, and are now half buried in the sand, he sees, at length, a hut, standing upon the shore just above the reach of the water—the only human structure to be seen. He enters the hut. The surf boat is there, resting upon its rollers, all ready to be launched, and with its oars and all its furniture and appliances complete, and ready for the sea. The fireplace is there, with the wood laid, and matches ready for the kindling. Supplies of food and clothing are also at hand—and a compass: and on a placard, conspicuously posted, are the words,

      Shipwrecked mariners reaching this hut, in fog or snow, will find the town of Nantucket two miles distant, due west.

      It is impossible to contemplate such a spectacle as this, without a feeling of strong emotion—and a new and deeper interest in the superior excellency and nobleness of efforts made by man for saving life, and diminishing suffering, in comparison with the deeds of havoc and destruction which have been so much gloried in, in ages that are past. The Life-Boat rests in its retreat, not like a ferocious beast of prey, crouching in its covert to seize and destroy its hapless victims, but like an angel of mercy, reposing upon her wings, and watching for danger, that she may spring forth, on the first warning, to rescue and save.

      The Life-Car is a sort of boat, formed of copper or iron, and closed over, above, by a convex deck with a sort of door or hatchway through it, by which the passengers to be conveyed in it to the shore, are admitted. The car will hold from four to five persons. When these passengers are put in, the door, or rather cover, is shut down and bolted to its place; and the car is then drawn to the land, suspended by rings from a hawser which has previously been stretched from the ship to the shore.

      To be shut up in this manner in so dark and gloomy a receptacle, for the purpose of being drawn, perhaps at midnight, through a surf of such terrific violence that no boat can live in it, can not be a very agreeable alternative; but the emergencies in which the use of the life-car is called for, are such as do not admit of hesitation or delay. There is no light within the car, and there are no openings for the admission of air.4 It is subject, too, in its passage to the shore, to the most frightful shocks and concussions from the force of the breakers. The car, as first made, too, was of such a form as required the passengers within it to lie at length, in a recumbent position, which rendered them almost utterly helpless. The form is, however, now changed—the parts toward the ends, where the heads of the passengers would come, when placed in a sitting posture within, being made higher than the middle; and the opening or door is placed in the depressed part, in the centre. This arrangement is found to be much better than the former one, as it greatly facilitates the putting in of the passengers, who always require a greater or less degree of aid, and are often entirely insensible and helpless from the effects of fear, or of exposure to cold and hunger. Besides, by this arrangement those who have any strength remaining can take much more convenient and safer positions within the car, in their progress to the shore, than was possible under the old construction.

      The car, as will be seen by the foregoing drawings, is suspended from the hawser by means of short chains attached to the ends of it. These chains terminate in rings above, which rings ride upon the hawser, thus allowing the car to traverse to and fro, from the vessel to the shore. The car is drawn along, in making these passages, by means of lines attached to the two ends of it, one of which passes to the ship and the other to the shore. By means of these lines the empty car is first drawn out to the wreck by the passengers and crew, and then, when loaded, it is drawn back to the land by the people assembled there, as represented in the engraving at the head of this article.

      Perhaps the most important and difficult part of the operation of saving the passengers and crew in such cases, is the getting the hawser out in the first instance, so as to form a connection between the ship and the land. In fact, whenever a ship is stranded upon a coast, and people are assembled on the beach to assist the sufferers, the first thing to be done, is always to "get a line ashore." On the success of the attempts made to accomplish this, all the hopes of the sufferers depend. Various methods are resorted to, by the people on board the ship, in order to attain this end, where there are no means at hand on the shore, for effecting it. Perhaps the most common mode is to attach a small line to a cask, or to some other light and bulky substance which the surf can easily throw up upon the shore. The cask, or float, whatever it may be, when attached to the line, is thrown into the water, and after being rolled and tossed, hither and thither, by the tumultuous waves, now advancing, now receding, and now sweeping madly around in endless gyrations, it at length reaches a point where some adventurous wrecker on the beach can seize it, and pull it up upon the land. The line is then drawn in, and a hawser being attached to the outer end of it, by the crew of the ship, the end of the hawser itself is then drawn to the shore.

      THE CASK.

      This method, however, of making a communication with the shore from a distressed vessel, simple and sure as it may seem in description, proves generally extremely difficult and uncertain in actual practice. Sometimes, and that, too, not unfrequently when the billows are rolling in with most terrific violence upon the shore, the sea will carry nothing whatever to the land. The surges seem to pass under, and so to get beyond whatever objects lie floating upon the water, so that when a cask is thrown over to them, they play beneath it, leaving it where it was, or even drive it out to sea by not carrying it as far forward on their advance, as they bring it back by their recession. Even the lifeless body of the exhausted mariner, who when his strength was gone and he could cling no longer to the rigging, fell into the sea, is not drawn to the beach, but after surging to and fro for a short period about the vessel, it slowly disappears from view among the foam and the breakers toward the offing. In such cases it is useless to attempt to get a line on shore from the ship by means of any aid from the sea. The cask intrusted with the commission of bearing it, is beaten back against the vessel, or is drifted uselessly along the shore, rolling in and out upon the surges, but never approaching near enough to the beach to enable even the most daring adventurer

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None such are in fact required, for the car itself contains air enough for the use of its passengers for a quarter of an hour, and there is rarely occupied more than a period of two or three minutes to pass it through the surf to the shore.