Lifeboat (rescue)
A rescue lifeboat is a boat rescue craft which is used to attend a vessel in distress, or its survivors, to rescue crew and passengers. It can be hand pulled, sail powered or powered by an engine. Lifeboats may be rigid, inflatable or rigid-inflatable combination-hulled vessels.
Overview
There are generally three types of boat, in-land, in-shore and off-shore. A rescue lifeboat is a boat designed with specialised features for searching for, rescuing and saving the lives of people in peril at sea or other large bodies of water.In the United Kingdom and Ireland rescue lifeboats are typically vessels crewed by volunteers, intended for quick dispatch, launch and transit to reach a ship or individuals in trouble at sea. Off-shore boats are referred to as 'All-weather' and generally have a range of 150–250 nautical miles. Characteristics such as capability to withstand heavy weather, fuel capacity, navigation and communication devices carried, vary with size.
A vessel and her crew can be used for operation out to away from a place of safe refuge, remaining at or on the scene to search for several hours, with fuel reserves sufficient for returning; operating in up to gale force sea conditions; in daylight, fog and darkness. A smaller inshore rescue boat or inshore life boat and her crew would not be able to withstand these conditions for long.
In countries such as Canada and the United States, the term 'motor lifeboat', or its US military acronym MLB, is used to designate shore-based rescue lifeboats which are generally crewed by full-time coast guard service personnel. These vessels stay on standby service rather than patrolling in the water, like a crew of fire fighters standing by for an alarm. In Canada, some lifeboats are 'co-crewed', meaning that the operator and engineer are full-time personnel while the crew members are trained volunteers.
Types of craft
Inflatable boats (IB, RIB and RHIB)
Older inflatable boats, such as those introduced by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and Atlantic College in 1963, were soon made larger and those over often had plywood bottoms and were known as RIBs. These two types were superseded by newer types of RIBs which had purpose built hulls and flotation tubes. A gap in operations caused the New Zealand Lifeguard Service to reintroduce small 2 man IRB's, which have since been adopted by other organisations such as the RNLI as well.Lifeboats
Larger non-inflatable boats are also employed as lifeboats. The RNLI fields the Severn class lifeboat and Tamar class lifeboat as all-weather lifeboats. In the United States and Canada, the term motor life boat refers to a similar class of non-inflatable self-righting lifeboats, such as the 47-foot Motor Lifeboat. In France, the SNSM mainly equips all-weather lifeboats of the 17.6 m series of the "Patron Jack Morisseau" class.In 2022, the Canadian Coast Guard launched 62’ / 19m Bay Class Lifeboat based on hull form and topsides style of the shorter RNLI Severn Class All-weather Life-Boat designed by Robert Allan RAL naval architects of Vancouver.
History
China
The first recorded rescue attempt by boat is noted in the Record of the Grand Historian, Sima Qian, of the second century AD. It was the unsuccessful attempt to rescue Qu Yuan from drowning in the Miluo River by local fishermen. This humanitarian act has ever since been re-enacted in the 2,000 year old annual dragon boat festival, which is a UNESCO-designated intangible cultural heritage of the world.A regular lifeboat service operated from 1854 to 1940 along the middle reaches of the Chang jiang or Yangtze, a major river which flows through south central China. These waters are particularly treacherous to waterway travellers owing to the canyon-like gorge conditions along the river shore and the high volume and rate of flow. The 'long river' was a principal means of communication between coastal and interior China.
These river lifeboats, usually painted red, were of a wooden pulling boat design, with a very narrow length-to-beam ratio and a shallow draft for negotiating shoal waters and turbulent rock-strewn currents. They could thus be maneuvered sideways to negotiate rocks, similar to today's inflated rafts for 'running' fast rivers, and also could be hauled upstream by human haulers, rather than beasts of burden, who walked along narrow catwalks lining the canyon sides.
United Kingdom
The first lifeboat station in Britain was at Formby beach, established in 1776 by William Hutchinson, Dock Master for the Liverpool Common Council.The first non-submersible lifeboat is credited to Lionel Lukin, an Englishman who, in 1784, modified and patented a Norwegian yawl, fitting it with water-tight cork-filled chambers for additional buoyancy and a cast iron keel to keep the boat upright.
The first boat specialised as a lifeboat was tested on the River Tyne in England on January 29, 1790, built by Henry Greathead. The design won a competition organised by the private Law House committee, though William Wouldhave and Lionel Lukin both claimed to be the inventor of the first lifeboat. Greathead's boat, the Original entered service in 1790 and another 31 of the same design were constructed. The boat was rowed by up to 12 crew for whom cork jackets were provided. In 1807 Ludkin designed the Frances Ann for the Lowestoft service, which wasn't satisfied with Greathead's design, and this saved 300 lives over 42 years of service.
The first self-righting design was developed by William Wouldhave and also entered in the Law House competition, but was only awarded a half-prize. Self-righting designs were not deployed until the 1840s.
These lifeboats were crewed by 6 to 10 volunteers who would row out from shore when a ship was in distress. In the case of the UK the crews were generally local boatmen. One example of this was the Newhaven Lifeboat, established in 1803 in response to the wrecking of HMS Brazen in January 1800, when only one of her crew of 105 could be saved. The UK combined many of these local efforts into a national organisation in 1824 with the establishment of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. One example of an early lifeboat was the Landguard Fort Lifeboat of 1821, designed by Richard Hall Gower.
In 1851, James Beeching and James Peake produced the design for the Beeching–Peake SR lifeboat which became the standard model for the new Royal National Lifeboat Institution fleet.
File:RNLI_lifeboat,_Dunbar_harbour.jpg|thumb|RNLI lifeboat in Dunbar Harbour, 1981
The first motorised boat, the Duke of Northumberland, was built in 1890 and was steam powered. In 1929 the motorised lifeboat Princess Mary was commissioned and was the largest oceangoing lifeboat at that time, able to carry over 300 persons on rescue missions. The Princess Mary was stationed at Padstow in Cornwall, England.
United States
The United States Life Saving Service was established in 1848. This was a United States government agency that grew out of private and local humanitarian efforts to save the lives of shipwrecked mariners and passengers. In 1915 the USLSS merged with the Revenue Cutter Service to form the United States Coast Guard.In 1899 the Lake Shore Engine Company, at the behest of the Marquette Life Saving Station, fitted a two-cylinder engine to a lifeboat on Lake Superior, Michigan. Its operation marked the introduction of the term motor life boat . By 1909, 44 boats had been fitted with engines whose power had increased to.
The sailors of the MLBs are called "surfmen", after the name given to the volunteers of the original USLSS. The main school for training USCG surfmen is the National Motor Lifeboat School located at the Coast Guard Station Cape Disappointment at the mouth of the Columbia River, which is also the boundary separating Washington State from Oregon State. The sand bars which form at the entrance are treacherous and provide a tough training environment for surf lifesavers.
Canada
Canada established its first lifeboat stations in the mid-to-late 19th century along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as along the shores of the Canadian side of the Great Lakes. The original organisation was called the "Canadian Lifesaving Service", not to be confused with the Royal Life Saving Society of Canada, which came later at the turn of the 20th century.In 1908, Canada had the first lifeboat to be equipped with a motor in North America, at Bamfield, British Columbia.
France
The Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer is a French voluntary organisation founded in 1967 by merging the Société Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufragés and the Hospitaliers Sauveteurs Bretons. Its task is saving lives at sea around the French coast, including the overseas départments and territories.Modern lifeboats
Lifeboats have been modified by the addition of an engine since 1890 which provides more power to get in and out of the swell area inside the surf. They can be launched from shore in any weather and perform rescues further out. Older lifeboats relied on sails and oars which are slower and dependent on wind conditions or manpower. Modern lifeboats generally have electronic devices such as radios and radar to help locate the party in distress and carry medical and food supplies for the survivors.The Rigid Hulled Inflatable Boat is now seen as the best type of craft for in-shore rescues as they are less likely to be tipped over by the wind or breakers. Specially designed jet rescue boats have also been used successfully. Unlike ordinary pleasure craft these small to medium-sized rescue craft often have a very low freeboard so that victims can be taken aboard without lifting. This means that the boats are designed to operate with water inside the boat hull and rely on flotation tanks rather than hull displacement to stay afloat and upright.
Inflatables s fell out of general use after the introduction of RIBs during the 1970s. Conditions in New Zealand and other large surf zones was identified and Inflatable Rescue Boats, small non rigid powered boats, were introduced by New Zealand at Piha Beach and have been put into use in many other countries including Australia and the RNLI in the UK.