Palmer-class lifeboat

The Palmer-class lifeboat was an early design of small lifeboat used by the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck in the middle years of the nineteenth century.

Design

George Palmer was a London businessman. He joined the committee of the RNIPLS in 1826, just two years after its founding, and later became its deputy chairman. One of the organisation's activities was to provide lifeboats and it bought them from several sources. Palmer offered a design based on a whaleboat, narrow and pointed at both ends. It was given extra buoyancy by the use of cork fittings and air chambers.

Later whale boats

Most lifeboats built from the 1850s were of the self-righting type but some whale boat lifeboats continued to be provided to stations where there was a need for a small boat, the last being built in 1910 and withdrawn in 1938.

	Name	Built	Length	In service	Station	Comments
280	Henley	1889		1890–1893
376	Captain Hans Busk	1869		1869–1905		Retained as a boarding boat until 1910.
481	Richard Cresswell	1902		1902–1910
481	Richard Cresswell	1902		1910–1931
551	Selina	1905		1905–1923		Sold in 1923 and now awaiting restoration.
615	John Watson Wakefield	1910		1910–1938