AT a time when great and, we trust, successful efforts are making to improve our life-boats, it is but right to put on record some facts connected with the first life-boat ever used in this country, the credit of which belongs to HENRY GREATHEAD, late boat-builder, of South Shields. In consequence of the wreck of the Adventure, of Newcastle, in September, 1789, on the Herd Sand, at the entrance of the Tyne, when the crew were seen to drop from the rigging, and perish in presence of thousands of spectators, who watched them from the shore, bat could render no assistance, a subscription was entered into by several gentlemen, a Committee appointed (of which Mr. NICHOLAS FAIRLES was Chair- man), and a reward offered for the best model of a life-boat Among the competitors was WILLIAM WOULDHAVE, a clever but a wayward man, who died at South Shields in 1821. His was the only model, we be- lieve, sent in to the Committee, He is spoken of by some as the inventor of the life- boat PRINGLE'S MS says, "The idea of the peculiar construction he adopted as his model was suggested to him, as he stated to a friend, by the circumstance of a woman, at the Field House Well, asking him to assist her to put a steel of water on her head.

She had a piece of a broken wooden dish floating in the water, which, he observed, floated with the points upwards. He turned it over several times, and ascertained that it always righted itself." The Committee, however, awarded the premium to GREATHEAD; this builder suggesting, say they, " the material improvement of making the keel curved instead of straight," and he was forthwith employed to build a boat according to the plan he had proposed.

The dimensions of the boat were as fol- lows : length extreme, 80 ft.; length of keel, 20 ft.; breadth of beam, 10 ft.; depth of waist outside, 3f ft.; depth inside, to deck, 2-|- ft.; stem and stern alike, 5f ft. high; sheer of gun- wale, 30 in.; to pull 10 oars double-banked, with iron thole-pins, and grummets; very raking stem and stern-post, 10i in. to 1 ft; depth of main keel, 4 in., with great camber or curvature; and three sliding keels. A cork lining, 12 in. thick, runs fore and aft OB each side, and reaches from the deck to the thwarts; and a cork fender outside, 16 in. deep, 4 in. wide, and 21 ft. long, not reaching to the stem or stern within 4| ft.; a deck, or platform, laid at 11 in. above the bottom of the keel; 5 thwarts, 36 in, apart from centre to centre, at 16 in. above the flat and 11 in. below tire gunwale.

The form of the boat like that of a steamer's paddle-box boat, with stem and stern alike. She had no means of freeing herself of water, nor of self-righting, in the event of being upset. This boat was built by subscription at South Shields, and launched on the 80th January, 1790. The Society of Arts rewarded the inventor with its Gold Medal and 50 guineas in the year 1802, the Trinity Corporation and subscribers to Lloyd's granted him 100 guineas each, and Parliament voted him 1,200Z. in the same year, in acknowledgment of the utility of his invention.The first service that this boat was called upon to render was in 1791, at the wreck of a Sunderland brig, stranded at the entrance of the Tyne, the crew of which she saved. On the 1st January, 1795, saved the crew of the ship Parthenius, of New- castle; also of the Peggy. In 1796, saved the crew of a Scottish sloop, the Countess of Errol. In 1797, the Fruit of Friends, from Leith; the Planter, of London, &c. Hitherto, no other life-boat had been built; but in 1798, the Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND employed GREATHEAD to build a boat for North Shields, where it was stationed, and his Grace endowed it with an annuity for its preservation. This boat is still in existence, but not in use. Its first service was in November, 1798, when it saved 7 men from the sloop Edinburgh, of Kincardine, wrecked on the Herd Sand; saved the crew of the brig Clio, of Sunder- land ; and in October, 1799, saved the crew of the ship Quintittian, of St. Petersburg!), &c. In addition to the above, the Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND ordered a life-boat for Oporto in 1800; and, by the end of the year 1803, GREATHEAD had built 31 life- boats (including the three before mentioned), and for the following places:—St. Andrew's and Montrose, in Scotland, in the year 1800; Lowestoft and Woodbridge, in Suffolk, in 1801, and in the same year gave a plan from which a life-boat was built and stationed at Scarborough; Ramsgate, Whit- by, Redcar, Holy Island, Douglas (Isle of Man), Aberdeen, Ayr, Liverpool, and Christ- church, in 1802; Guernsey, Newhaven (Sussex), Plymouth, Arbroath, Exmouth, Rye, Penzance, and Whitehaven, in 1803; also for Memel, Pillau, Stettin, Copenhagen, Elsinore, Gottenburg, and Cronstadt, on the Continent of Europe.

Four years prior to GREATHEAD'S first boat, that is in the year 1785, one LIONEL LUKIN, a coach-builder in London, took out a patent for a life-boat. This boat is said to have been strong and buoyant. We have no account of its dimensions, nor have we been able to trace where it was built or what became of it; but its peculiar features were projecting gunwales, side air-cases built into the boat, or double sides, and air- cases under the thwarts. LUKIN wrote a pamphlet on life-boats, entitled " The In- vention, Principles, and Construction of In- submergeable Boats," published by Nicholl and Son, London, 1806. He retired from business in 1824, and settled at Hythe, in Kent, where he died in 1834; and on the back of his tombstone is engraved " This Lionel Lukin was the first who built a life- boat, and was the original inventor of that principle of safety by which many lives and much property have been saved from ship- wreck ; and he obtained the King's patent in 1785.'' Whether GREATHEAD was acquainted with LUKIN'S proposal does not appear; if so, he rejected the side air-cases and adopted cork instead. From the period of GREAT- HEAD'S first boat, now more than 60 years ago, to the present time, -various modifica- tions of the boat have been built, but its general form and principal dimensions are still retained at Shields, Sunderland, and generally in the ports in the north of Eng- land. There is a little doubt as to the di- mensions of the original boat—some say 30 ft., others 28 ft. long; but the engraved plan by STEELE, in 1812, shows a boat 26 ft.

long, 9| ft. wide, 3£ ft. deep, 6£ ft. height of stern, and sheer 30 in., or much more than any boat now-a-days; yet it does not seem that this large sheer was given with any view of making the boat self-right.

Air-cases somewhat similar to LUKIN'S have been since introduced at the sides, instead of cork, and also under the deck or flat. We do not know when, these were first adopted, but we find, as early as March, 1806, Mr. CHRISTOPHER WILSON, of the Commercial-road, exhibited before the Society of Arts the model of what he terms "a neutral-built self-balanced boat," as a life-boat, for -which he received the Society's Gold Medal. Its only claim to be called a life-boat consists in a double side from the gunwale to the water-line, forming an air- chamber, about 1 ft. wide, very much the same as LUKIN'S boat, divided into compartments, and not very dissimilar in that respect to the fitting of the life-boats built by the Messrs. PLENTY, of Newbury, Berks, in 1824, for the Shipwreck Institution (figured at Plate 5 in Report of the Northumberland Life-boat Committee); but in all other respects, PLENTY'S boats, which were well- built safe boats, were very superior.

Water, too, has been introduced as ballast, among others, by FARROW, of South Shields, in 1843; but the earliest use of it that we know of is in a boat built by SKELTON, of Scarborough, in the year 1825, and now doing work as a life-boat at Caernarvon ; the water is admitted and retained in a covered well, very similar to the mode adopted in other boats that use water-ballast.

Tubes or scuppers for freeing life-boats of water have also been introduced, but very sparingly, until lately; whereas they are essential to the efficiency of a life-boat, and if the greater part of the water from below can be kept out by a self-acting valve, which may be done by WELLS'S patent valve, the free use of tubes cannot cause any inconvenience to the boat or the crew.

Other modifications of GREATHEAD'S boat have been made, and recently a slight change of external form has been introduced, giving the boats a finer entrance, a little less beam, and obtaining the stability rather by a straight side and a long flat floor. It remains to be proved how these do their work, but the credit of having built the first practical life- boat is undoubtedly that of GREATHEAD ; and boats much of the same construction are still placed at North and South Shields, where, by skilful management, they have been the means of saving hundreds of lives during the sixty years they have been in use.