Life-Saving Appliances on Merchant Ships

Abstract

THE Royal Society of Arts has several times given awards for inventions in connexion with life-boats and in 1878 it appointed a committee to consider marine life-saving apparatus. Its interest in nautical affairs is also shown by the Thomas Gray lectures, which were this year given by Capt. O. A. Barrand and Mr. G. A. Green on life-saving appliances on merchant ships, reports of which have now appeared (J. Boy. Soc. Arts, Sept. 16, 23, 30, Oct. 7). The lectures were divided into sections dealing with life-buoys and life-jackets, coastal life boats, ships' boats, boat stowage and buoyant apparatus. The credit for the design of the “Standard” life-jacket, we learn, belongs to certain officers of the Board of Trade, but jackets can be manufactured by anyone if permission is obtained. The best jackets are now of ‘kapok’, which when suitably packed has a buoyancy value of 3½ times that of cork. Kapok is the seed-hair of a plant growing in the East, but only Java kapok is permitted in life-jackets. The tests for jackets are stringent and the Standard jacket has to contain 24 oz. of the best Java kapok and to be capable of supporting 20 1b. of iron after floating in fresh water for 24 hours with 16J 1b. of iron attached. The loss of buoyancy of Java kapok has been shown to be only 10 per cent in thirty days' immersion.