THIS benevolent and ingenious gentleman has been gathered to his fathers, full of years and honours, his decease having occurred on the 18th November last, at his residence Southdown, near Great Yarmouth.

His well-known mortar apparatus has made his name as familiar as a " household word on the coasts of the United Kingdom ; and our object will be, in the following remarks, to confine our observations to his connexion with that celebrated invention.

It is hardly necessary to acquaint the reader, that when a vessel is stranded very near the shore, a life-boat may not be available ; and yet there is almost as little chance of the crew saving themselves by swimming from a distance of 200 or 300 yards, as from that of half-a-mile from the land. So well aware are seamen of the folly of trusting themselves to the waves, that they will generally stick to their vessel while the planks hold together. In these cases, the main object of the spectators will be to convey a rope to the wreck; and for one of the best plans for this purpose the nation is indebted to the benevolence and ingenuity of the late Capt. MANBY.

It is true, that in the year 1792, Lieut. BELL, of the Royal Artillery, had laid before the Society of Arts " a plan for throwing a rope on shore by means of a shell from a mortar on board the vessel in distress," or vice versa, and that he had received a premium of fifty guineas on the success of his experiments at Woolwich. We also find that similar experiments were made by a Frenchman named LA FERE; but Capt. MANBY may fairly be considered as an original inventoi, as he declared to a Committee of the House of Commons in 1823, that he had never heard of these experiments till he had completed his own, to which he had indeed been led by the success of an experiment he had himself made with very different views, at an earlier period than either of the above mentioned, and he has undoubtedly the sole merit of having brought his plan into actual use; and to accomplisheven this object on his part, it required no small amount of courage and perseverance.

It appears from a volume which he published in 1851, giving, as he says, " a summary of his services to the State," that his attention was first drawn to the subject by beibg a spectator of the loss of the Snipe, gun-brig, on the 18th February 1807, and seeing sixty-seven persons drowned within sixty yards of the Yarmouth beach, after remaining five or six hours on the wreck without a possibility of receiving assistance.

Previously to witnessing this horrible scene, Capt. MANBY, accustomed, from the vicinity" of his residence to the beach, to see shipwrecks, thought, with many others, that the destruction generally attendant on such disasters was irremediable; but he was now thoroughly convinced that means might be devised to prevent such wholesale destruction of human life, within so short distance from the shore. He recollected that he had, about the year 1783, thrown line, by means of a small mortar, over Downham Church, in Norfolk ; and it struck him that he might, by the same means, throw a line over a stranded vessel. After making many experiments, which proved unsuccessful, he obtained the use of a mortar from the Board of Ordnance ; still he had to make numberless experiments before he could succeed in his object. The grand difficulty lay in connecting the shot securely with the rope: chains of every form were found liable to break on the discharge; but at length, stout strips of raw hide platted closely, answered the purpose. Repeated trials during high gales of wind gave him confidence in his plan, and he was now prepared to give proof of its utility.

An ,'opportunity soon occurred. On the 12th February 1808, a brig ran aground about 150 yards from the shore. At daybreak the crew were seen in the utmost danger ; they had lashed themselves in the rigging; it was blowing a hard gale from N.E., and the waves were breaking over them. Many attempts were made to get a K at off to their assistance, but to no purpose.

Capt. MANBY then brought down his mortar from his residence to the scene of distress; and presently, to the infinite satisfaction and wonder of all the spectators, he threw a line over the vessel. By this line a boat was hauled off, and the crew, consisting of seven persons, were brought in safety to the land. On this his first triumph in saving poor creatures from perishing, he always looked back with much pleasure; and nearly forty years afterwards, at a considerable expense, he erected a pedestal near the spot, to commemorate this first successful trial of an invention which since that period has been instrumental in saving many hundreds of lives.

During the following winter, Capt. MANBY had the satisfaction of rescuing the crews of several vessels; and in 1810 Mr. CURWEN, M.P., brought his invention under the notice of Parliament, in which he was supported by Mr. WILBEHFORCE and Mr. WHITBREAD.

In 1814, Capt. MANBY's plan was again taken into consideration by the House of Commons. In the course of the following year, about forty-five mortars, with the apparatus, were sent to various parts of the coasts. But from some cause or another they fell into disuse, and many of them were soon allowed to get out of order; and we find that up to the spring of 1823, when Capt MANBY'S services were again brought before Parliament,—for he was one of those men who could use his pen pretty fluently, and who would not quietly succumb to a real or an imaginary injustice,—only nineteen persons had been saved by it on all the coasts of the kingdom, with the exception of Norfolk and Suffolk, where it had been zealously put in practice and kept in good order, and where 220 shipwrecked persons had been saved by it. The Committee of the House of Commons strongly recommended an extension on the coast of the plan, and recommended a grant of 2000Z. to Capt. MANBY, in addition to the sums which had in previous years been granted to him by Parliament in acknowledgment of his services.

He also held, we believe, a good situation under Government until the day of his death.

On the establishment of the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, in 1824, the Society cordially co-operated with the Government in providing the coasts with sets of this apparatus.

Capt. MANBY had now, we believe, yielded entirely his right hi the apparatus to the Government, and we are not aware that he actively employed himself further in the matter; but he continued to take an interest even to the day of his death in the success of his invention for saving life.

Capt. MANBY was the inventor of several other plans for saving life, both from drowning and from fire. He had himself saved one person from fire and another from suffocation, and had rescued eighty-two lives from shipwreck, many of them at great personal risk to himself. It was not without much satisfaction that he anticipated the verdict of posterity, as to whether he had fulfilled the last order of his schoolfellow, the immortal Nelson: " England expects every man to do his duty." The successful results of his plans had the good fortune to be honoured with thanks and appropriate medals from the following Sovereigns and Societies :— His Majesty FREDERICK THE SIXTH, King of Denmark.

His Majesty CHARLES JOHN, King of Sweden.

His Majesty WILLIAM, King of the Netherlands.

His Majesty CHARLES THE TENTH, King of France.

Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck.

Royal Humane Society.

Society of Arts.

Highland Society of Scotland.

Suffolk Humane Society.

Norfolk Shipwreck Association.

To have his services thus appropriately recognised by so many crowned heads, and the before-mentioned philanthropic bodies, was always a source of much gratification to him.

From 1808 to 1823 he wrote several papers on the necessity of making provision on the coasts for rescuing shipwrecked persons by his apparatus and life-boats.

In 1837 he had the satisfaction to see a Society commenced in London for the Pro-tection of Life from Fire, in the welfare of which he took much interest.

Capt. MANBY was born of respectable parents at Hilgay, in Norfolk, on the' 28th November 1765, and was consequently, at his decease, in his 89th year.

At the meeting of the General Committee of the .Royal National Life-Boat Institution, held on the 7th December last, the following resolution was passed respecting the deceased gentleman:— " Resolved—That the Committee of the National Life-Boat Institution, having heard with regret the account of the death of Capt. MANBY, desire to record their high sense of his unwearied exertions during the last half century in saving life from shipwreck, having been mainly instrumental in introducing into general use his mortar Life-Preserving apparatus on our coasts, whereby probably 1000 lives have been saved from a premature death.".