Ex ships lifeboat

[sailorise]

I was so impressed by the response to an earlier question, I thought I'd see if anyone can shed any light onto this one.
I am restoring an ex 30ft Mahogany double diagonal ships life boat. I was told that it was probably pre war but I've no idea why anyone would think that. It has lifting tackle at both ends and approx one third of the way in from the bows, there appears to be a 'tiny' tabanacle. She is straight stemmed and has carved there a few number plus "90 persons". Her long 30ft oak keel is in one piece. I don't think she had an engine installed. I appreciate they were made in their millions and so lifeboat history must be of a very general nature. But I wondered if the details I''ve mentioned narrow it down just a little.

 

[Peterduck]

I would have thought that the 30ft one-piece straight oak keel would be a good indicator for a pre-war origin. "Aargh, yew garn't git wood like that nowadays"! [How often have I heard that?] Why do you think that it would be post-war?
Peter.

 

[sailorise]

Yes, of course youre right, I just wouldn't have expected mahogany to have lasted so well - albeit a Honduras variety.
Would it have had a sail? it's shaped more like an ark. Why would most have been clinker built in softwood and others dd in mahogany?

 

[Mirelle]

Re: Ex ship\'s lifeboat

Most lifeboats were clinker built of larch. This was the cheapest way of building them. The photos of the TITANIC's lifeboats, lower down, show standard clinker lifeboats. For ships intended to operate on the North Atlantic, or for cheap tramps, whose owners were concerned merely to comply with the regulations, at minimal expense (this accounts for 98% of all shipowners!) this was fine.

Passenger ships operating regularly through the tropics, in particular lifeboats built for P&O liners, operating to India through the Red Sea, had double diagonal planked lifeboats because unlike clinker boats they would not "open up" in the heat and sun, and would remain watertight, unlike clinker boats which leaked like sieves if launched after a spell in the sun.

The size of yours (90 persons) tells us that it is indeed from a passenger liner, and my guess is that it is ex - P&O.

Lifeboats often had a very simple sailing rig, with a lugsail and jib. The sails were red cotton, very badly put together (they only had to pass inspections and perhaps work for a day or two) but since lifeboats are the shape they are, the sailing was of the downhill only variety.

None the less, some amzing voyages were made in ordinary ships' boats.

The best known peacetime case was that of the TREVESSA, a Hain, Nourse tramp (owned in Cornwall - this comapny eventually merged with P&O - all ships had "Tre-"names) which sank between South Africa and Australia in the 1920's, an era when tramp owners had generally removed, on grounds of economy, the radio sets that their ships had been fitted with in the War. The crew took to the two boats and made a passage of 1,700 miles to land, safely. The Master wrote a book about it which was reprinted in the Mariner's Library editions.

 

[Mirelle]

The \"Trevessa\"

Well, I got that slightly wrong.

here she is:

and here, courtesy of a Mauritius website, is a more accurate version of the story:

In June 1923 the Hain Line steamer "Trevessa" loaded with zinc concentrates and on route from Fremantle to Durban sank very quickly in the Indian Ocean during a violent storm. The 44 crew members scrambled into two lifeboats, some with very little clothing on, and the Captain Cecil Foster decided to endeavour to make for Mauritius some 2,000 miles away. With no compass and only enough water for 7 pints per man, 550 biscuits and two cases on condensed milk they were immediately put on strict rations. The boats soon became separated and with the soaring heat of the tropics some succumbed to drinking salt water which caused them to become delirious and death followed quickly. With no wind the men had to row which aggravated not only their swollen hands and feet but also their bodies which were suffering from extensive salt water boils. It was only by perfect discipline and obedience to the Captain's orders that the crew stuck together and on the 23rd day one boat landed on the island of Rodriguez. Three days later the second boat landed at Bel-Ombre, Mauritius and a total of 34 men survived.

 

[cliffordpope]

Ships\' lifeboats

When my father researched the history of our clinker lifeboat conversion, back in the 60s, he discovered that it had been a reserve lifeboat for the P&O ship Maloja (spelling?). This I believe was on a far Eastern run. It had never actually been aboard the ship, but kept in store until the ship was scrapped and then sold off.
It sounds a slightly improbable story - why have individual reserve lifeboats and not just a common pool, or why have reserves at all?

 

[Mirelle]

Re: Ships\' lifeboats

I have an elderly and hugely distinguished friend who joined the P&O as a graduate trainee (he resigned, as a director, over the Bovis affair) at a time when they had a ship for every day of the year, a policy of "only the best is good enough" and no two ships* the same!

Another friend, a Thames Barge skipper, remembers looking into a PLA warehouse and seeing new, double diagonal teak planked, launches piled one on top of another in a corner.

I myself have seen, in a corner of a prominent Hong Kong shipyard, a pile of bronze spare propellers that no-one could remember the owners of.

So, however improbable it seems, the story may be perfectly possible!

One expects the lifeboats to have been standardised, (but see above!*) but it would make sense for a Line to have a spare available at the home port, in case of mishap to one of the other boats, rather like airlines now always try to have a spare engine at the other end of each route.

 

[ValleyForge]

Re: Ships\' lifeboats

I seem to recall from a trip round Vickers at Barrow in the early 70's, a large gun turret - said to be a spare for the Royal Oak,sunk 1939 ...

 

[ianc1200]

Re: Ships\' lifeboats

I thought there were BOT (Board of Trade) standardised designs for ships lifeboats, standard rigs etc, and I have seen (but not being able to buy, too slow) books with the specifications and designs in. Later there were accepted engines (one of the Vedettes being one) and of course the lifeboat binnacles.

Many books were also published on converting lifeboats into yachts, covering the standard BOT designs plus ex naval small craft like whalers.

When I started boating on the Thames in the early 60's yards were full of such conversions, and theres still many to be seen around today.

IanC

 

[Mirelle]

Re: Ships\' lifeboats

I don't think the late, and, by some, lamented, Board Of Trade ever actually designed anything nautical. It "approved" designs and it issued specifications. Ships' lifeboats had to comply with those specifications, which, in the high and palmy days of British shipping, were often quite detailed. So the form of a lifeboat was governed by the specifications, but the details were down to the maker. That's still pretty much what happens now, but the MCA is more concerned with applying IMO specifications than with writing its own.

 

[sailorise]

Re: Ships\' lifeboats

In the process of "approving and issue of specifications" would the BoT have kept records, do you think. And would you know if the MCA inherited such records for the likes of me to gaze at? I'd be curious to know how they kept the boats from sagging. And how they imagined 90 persons would survive in a 30ft X 10ft6" boat for longer than a minute or so.

 

[Mirelle]

Re: Ships\' lifeboats

Well, they certainly kept records. But their records will be of the regulations that they promulgated, not of individual boats built to accord with those regulations. Whether such things are now in the Pink Palace in Southampton I doubt; more likely in the Public Record Office, I suppose, or maybe the Maritime Museum.

More practically, try rooting round in secondhand bookshops, or perhaps the CA Library, or even the Brown, Son and Ferguson current list (!) for older seamanship textbooks and copies of Hopkins Business and Law for the Shipmaster.

I seem to recall, though I stand to be corrected, that the number of bodies to be squeezed in was related to the volume of the lifeboat in a fairly crude way - so many cubic feet per survivor.