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Updated: May 8, 2025
The saloon was entered by way of a short companion ladder leading from a small self-emptying cockpit, some five feet wide by six feet long, this cockpit being the only open space in the boat, the rest of her hull being completely decked over. The saloon was lighted by a small skylight and six scuttles three of a side fixed in the planking of the little craft.
The hull was by this time practically finished; her deck was laid, her companion and tiny self-emptying cockpit completed, and all that was now needed was to run a low bulwark around her, rig and step the completed mast and bowsprit, bend the sails, ballast and launch her, get the stores, water, and treasure aboard; and up anchor and away.
A wreck had been seen about three miles off Dungeness, and the lifeboat at that place a small self-righting and self-emptying one belonging to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution put off, with eight stout men of the coast-guard for a crew. On reaching the wreck, soon after midnight, it was found that the crew had deserted her; the lifeboat therefore returned towards the shore.
This was not one of those splendid boats which now line the shores of the United Kingdom; nevertheless, it was a noble craft one of the good, stable, insubmergible and self-emptying kind which were known as the Greathead lifeboats, and which for many years did good service on our coasts.
The self-emptying principle is quite equal to the self-righting in importance. In every case of putting off to a wreck in a gale, a lifeboat ships a great deal of water. In most cases she fills more than once. Frequently she is overwhelmed by tons of water by every sea.
Safety is provided by air-tight tanks which insure buoyancy in case the boat is filled with water. They have also self-righting power in case of being overturned; likewise self-emptying power. Life-boats are usually of the whaleboat type, with copper air-tight tanks along the side beneath the thwarts, and in the ends.
I have now shown that the great qualities of our lifeboat are buoyancy, or a tendency not to sink; self-righting power, or inability to remain upside down; self-emptying power, or a capacity to discharge any water that may get into it; and stability, or a tendency not to upset. The last quality I shall refer to, though by no means the least, is strength.
She was a self-righting, self-emptying boat, belonging to the Lifeboat Institution. The wreck was reached soon after midnight, and found to have been abandoned. The boat, therefore, returned towards the shore. Now, there is a greater danger in rowing before a gale than in rowing against it.
Let its self-emptying and buoyant qualities be ever so good, you have only to upset it to render it no better than any other boat; indeed, in a sense, it is worse than other boats, because it leads men to face danger which they would not dare to encounter in an ordinary boat.
And this is indeed the case; for when the force that sinks a lifeboat is removed, she rises that instant to the surface like a cork. In order to prove the value of the self-righting quality, and the superiority of those lifeboats which possess it over those which are destitute of it, we will briefly cite three cases the last of which will also prove the value of the self-emptying quality.
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