BELTS FOR LIFEBOATS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20244, 2 May 1929, Page 13

BELTS FOR LIFEBOATS.

the use of kapok.

INQUIRY BY A COMMITTEE. ■ [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] LONDON. Marcli 27. The Board of .Trade have appointed a committee to examine the statements and recommendations on the subject of kapok in the report of the Court on the Ryq lifeboat disaster. The committee will also advise whether any alterations should be made in existing rules and practice with regard to the use of kapok. Kapok was adopted bv the Royal National Lifeboat Institution as a material for lifebelts in 1901. Is is a vegetable product, and the retention of its natural oil prevented, it was believed, the absorption of water. In an interview published in the Daily Telegraph in November, Mr. George F. Shee, secretary of the institution, mentioned as its advantages over otlicr materials that kapok was lighter, had buoyancy, would support a great weight in proportion to its bulk, and was friable. Kapok was adopted by the Board of Trado for the mercantile marino some years later. At the Board of Trado inquiry into tho disaster some of. the witnesses criticised the belts with which the members of the crew were equipped. The actual belts were afterwards submitted to severe tests, and expert witnesses, as a result, declared that their faith in them was unshaken. Tho Court, in ils findings, declared VAlthough the Board of Trade and the Royal National Lii'eboat Institution have carried out a very large number of tests of various types and patterns of lifebelts, none of tho "tests reproduced the conditions which prevailed when tho Mary Stanford was capsized and when the lifebelts worn by the crew appear to havo absorbed an extraordinarily large amount of water in tho fabric, kapok, and (or) pockets. It therefore submits for consideration whether further and more exhaustive trials and tests are nob necessary."