THE INVENTOR OF THE LIFE-BOAT.
"The most eloquent speaker, the most ingenious writer, and the most
accomplished statesman cannot effect so much as the mere presence
of the man who tempers his wisdom and his vigour with humanity."
_Lavater._
What dreams had Lionel Luken, coach-builder of London, in the year 1780,
or thereabouts? The perils to machines, or coaches, in those days were
many and varied; the roads were often rough, and dangerous enough to
equal the pleasing variety and exciting accompaniments of a
cross-country gallop; the bridges were very few, and the fords very
many.
Did Lionel Luken lose coach, or customer, or both, in a rushing flood
which overwhelmed some burdensome coach and unhappy travellers at one of
these fords? and, thinking over the disaster sorrowfully, patiently, and
profitably, as great minds and great hearts will think, did he conceive
the idea of a coach warranted against sinking, with air-tight
compartments? and then, expanding the idea, did the noble thought occur
to him of building a boat that would not merely float in the rush of a
flood, but that would defy the troubled waters of a raging sea? And was
it thus, that Lionel Luken gained unto himself the immortal honour of
being the first inventor of the Life-boat?
In whatever manner the idea presented itself to him, and however it was
developed in the mind of the skilful and humane coach-builder, certain
it is that it seized him very thoroughly, and that he, being one of the
race of God's heroes, alike humane, brave, and earnest, was not content
to let his happy, his blessed thought die barren of result, but made
noble and persevering efforts to bring his invention to a successful
issue. He had high courage, for his courage was inspired by the great
hope that his boat might be the instrument of plucking many poor sailors
from dread peril, carrying them through threatening seas, snatching them
from the very jaws of death, and of restoring them to their loving ones
in their loved homes. With this holy ambition, Lionel Luken laboured
nobly, as, urged by a like ambition, many now labour nobly for the good
life-boat cause. But the old days were not days of quick sympathy, or of
ready enterprise, and Luken, although supported, to a certain extent, by
royalty, uselessly clamoured at official doors, and sought public
patronage in vain.
People seemed then to have no strong objection to other people being
drowned, just as they had no strong prejudice against others suffering
the tortures of miserable prisons, the worst asylums, or any of the
many horrors which a more enlightened age has sought with some degree of
success to lessen or remove.
In the year 1785 Luken took out a patent for a boat which, to a great
extent, embodied almost all the more needful properties possessed by the
present model life-boat; he at the same time published a pamphlet; "Upon
the invention, principle, and construction of insubmergible boats." He
suggested that such boats should be protected by bands of cork round
their gunwales, that they should be rendered buoyant by the use of
air-cases, especially at the bow and stern, and that they should be
ballasted by an iron keel.
But even when the good man passed from theory to practice, and succeeded
at Bamborough in getting a boat converted into a life-boat on the above
principles, and when this boat proved a success, and saved many lives,
even then he could obtain no support from the authorities in carrying
out his grand object.
The story is told of a general who blamed a soldier for ducking at the
sound of a cannon ball, saying that he had no business to be a soldier
if he had the faintest objection to being shot. On the same principle,
the first lord of the Admiralty, in his stern rejections of Luken's many
efforts, may have considered that life-boats would interfere with a
sailor's prerogative for being drowned; and drowned indeed many of the
poor fellows were--swept to destruction in sight of land, for winds were
cruel, and rocks were hard, and seas wild, and ships frail, while
benevolence slept, and the cries of the drowning did not reach official
ears, and Luken's loud appeals on behalf of humanity were disregarded,
and he, brave man, who had so long struggled, hoping against hope,
became utterly disappointed that the movement, the importance of which
he so realized, and for which he had so long laboured, did not become
general.
Still he had the satisfaction of seeing his plan adopted in one or two
places, in Shields especially, as we shall show; and he had the great
happiness of knowing that, time after time, lives were saved by the
boats which were built after his model. He had done all that he could,
and went on building coaches, not, we may presume, on life-boat
principles; and he tried somewhat to content himself, as he looked
forward with hope for a time of greater enlightenment and sympathy, when
he trusted that the seed he sowed, almost with tears, would bring its
harvest of sheaves, and full of this faith, the good man devised an
inscription for the stone which should mark his resting-place in a quiet
country churchyard, simply stating, "That he was the Inventor of the
first life-boat."
Honoured be the memory of Lionel Luken!