WONDERFUL LIFEBOAT.

Western Star, 20 August 1929, Page 4

WONDERFUL LIFEBOAT.

COULD SAVE 300 IN ONE TRIP

The largest motor lifeboat in Oie world lias been built for the Bcyol National Lifeboat Institution bj S E. Saunders, Ltd, Cowes. She had been built out of the .rift of £14,000 which the Peninsulai and Oriental group of shipping cc nanies has made, through Lord Inched to the institution, in response to the Prince of Wales’s appeaUa year. She is to be named Mary, and will be stationed at Icd,.fow Cornwall. . , , This new lifeboat is sixty-one feet

long with fifteen feet beain, and is ot two thicknesses of teak. She D;. teen main and 100 minor wateMight compartments, and displaces forty-five tons of water. Her excess buoyancy will be equal to nearly one and ahalf times that weight, so that eve.il if severely damaged she will remain afloat and manageable She ivill be driven by two 80 h.p.

engines, which will continue to work even if entirely submerged! provided the air inlets are above water. No only are the engines in watertight

compartments, but they are themselves water-tight. These engines will o-ive the boat a speed of be'ween nine and ten knots, with a reserve of power which will enable her to travel at full speed under practically any . conditions of weather. The boat has two cabins with ac-

commoclation for between fifty piki sixty people, and in a calm sea could take 300 people on deck. Under the worst weather conditions she cm. carry 150 people in addition to hem crew. She carries 500 gallons of petrol, owhich at a cruising speed of eight knots gives a range of 500 miles. She is fitted with jets in ad comments, by which an outbreak of fire can bo smothered by foam, and has oil sprays in her bows for .praying on heavy seas. She carries a linethrowing gun with a range of eighty yards; it is by electricity, and has an electric searchlight, an electrically driven windlass, and a life-saving net into which the ship wrecked can jump

as the life-boat lies alongside their

vessel. ' Since 1824 the Royal National Lifeboat Institute had saved 61,000 lives, about eleven lives per week, it'v.as reported,, at the annual meeting held at Liverpool in April.