A MOST important adjunct to a coast life- boat is a carriage. It is not sufficient that the boat herself be of a superior description, capable of contending safely and successfully with that element in which her work has to be performed, that she shall be enabled to reach the shipwrecked crew despite tine fury of the winds and waves, and bear them securely through the dreaded breakers, which otherwise oppose an insurmountable barrier between them and the envied shore. It is not sufficient that she be well furnished in all respects, and manned by an experienced and courageous crew; but it is necessary that she be also supplied with means for transportation on the land, for wrecks may occur at a distance of several miles from the .

spot where she is stationed, yet close to the shore. In such cases it is usually much safer and more expeditious for the life-boat to be conveyed by land to that part of the shore contiguous to the wreck, than for her to be rowed or sailed, broadside to the sea, through, perhaps, several miles of broken water. Again, at many places the shore is very flat; and should a wreck occur at low water, although abreast of the life-boat's station, yet she might have to be conveyed a quarter of a mile or more over the ground before she could be floated, which could then only be accomplished at the expense of much labour and loss of valuable time, un- less she were placed on a wheeled-carriage.

A boat can also not unfrequently be taken partially into the surf on her carriage, with her crew already in her, who are thus launched at once afloat from it, which is often a great advantage. Accordingly we find that nearly all coast life-boats, except- ing those of the largest size, are furnished with a carriage of one sort or another.

These vehicles are of various kinds and of equally varying efficiency, some better than others, but many of them heavy, cumber- some, ill-contrived machines, little adapted for the important office they are called on to fulfil, on which life and death frequently depend; for it is unquestionably often a mere matter of time whether a wrecked crew shall be saved or perish, and many have been the unfortunate beings who have been drowned, not from the inability of the neighbouring life-boat to contend with the danger of the raging surf, but because she could not, on her primitive wain, traverse the intervening distance by land ere the wrecked ship and her inmates had succumbed to their fate, or been driven into a position inaccessible even to a life-boat, only to suffer a more lingering destruction.

When it is considered how comparatively few life-boat carriages are in use, and that the majority of them, owing to the little wear and tear that they are subjected to, are calculated to last as long as their wooden framework remains sound, it is perhaps not to be wondered at that so little has been done towards improving and perfecting them; for, owing to there being so little demand for them, the expenditure of either time, labour, or money in effecting their improve- ment could never turn out other than a pro- fitless speculation in a pecuniary point of view: and, after all, we cannot conceal the fact that, in this common-place world, where most men must live by their wits and their labour, pecuniary profit is the great spur to invention. If it were necessary to advance proof of the truth of this statement, we need only to quote the instance of life- boats themselves, of which only about six varieties were in use in this country until the year 1851, when, on the Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND offering a prize of 100Z. for the best model or design of a life-boat, no less than 280 inventors competed for it.

The number of varieties of life-boat car- riages in use until the above year was about as numerous as the descriptions of boat.

The best of these was a four-wheeled car- riage in use on the coasts of Northumber- land, Durham, and Yorkshire, which, for distinction' sake (as we are not able to ascertain the name of the original inventor), we will call " the north-country carriage." For certain localities, where the roads are narrow, this carriage, on the whole, is still the fittest we are acquainted with; but as the wheels are placed underneath the boat, they cannot be made of large diameter, and consequently draw very heavily on a soft beach. In this carriage the framework or cradle on which the boat is supported (con- sisting of a keelway, fitted with rollers, and two bilgeways) turns on an axis over the hinder wheels, so as to form an inclined plane at pleasure, on which to haul the boat on and off the carriage, which operation is performed by tackles.

A new carriage was invented in 1852 by the late Lieut-Colonel COLQUHOUN, Royal Artillery: it had four wheels, the hinder ones being of large diameter; the frame- work on which the boat was supported was fixed over a cranked iron axle, upon which the hinder wheels revolved: there was a distinct fore-body, fitted as a cart to con- vey the mortar and rocket life-preserving apparatus, which was connected to the under body by a hook and eye, after the manner of the field guns and ammunition carts of an army. This carriage travelled well; but being very costly, very heavy, and the wheels at an inconvenient distance apart, only three or four carriages were built after it.

A two-wheeled carriage was, about the same time as the last described, invented by Lord HENRY CHOLMONDELEY, M.P., and several were constructed on his plan by the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society, which have now, to- gether with their boats, become the property of the National Life-boat Institution. The boats were hauled up on these carriages by an ingenious contrivance, the shafts being con- verted into levers, and working a windlass fixed at the fore part of the carriage. Perhaps the chief defect of this carriage is that it is only worked with single shafts, and that, when being drawn down hill, more weight is liable to be thrown on the shaft-horse than is consistent with safety to the horse or boat.' In 1853 a four-wheeled carriage was built for the National Life-boat Institution by Messrs. RANSOMES and SIMS, of Ipswich, from a design furnished by the Institution.

As in Colonel COLQUHOUN'S carriage, the boat is in this one carried over a cranked axle, between the hinder wheels, which are also of large diameter. Instead of the fore and hinder parts of the carriage being attached to each other by a hook and eye, so as to be disconnected altogether when launching or hauling up the boat, they are united by a long curved pivot bolt, which is traversed by the corresponding eye on the hinder car- riage, allowing the latter to carry the boat horizontally, or to form an inclined plane for kunching and hauling up without discon- necting the fore and hinder bodies, as in Colonel COLQUHOUN'S. This carriage has the further advantages of being considerably lighter and cheaper, and of having less width than Colonel COLQUHOUN'S, before described: it can also be turned round in a smaller space, which is often an object of much im- portance. Four carriages for large and heavy boats have been built on this plan by the National Life-boat Institution, and have been found to answer well: they are still, however, heavier and more costly than is desirable.

In 1855, a novel and most important invention was first applied to a life-boat carriage, which promises to form an era in the history of those machines, and indeed in the transit of all heavy bodies over soft or broken ground—we allude to BOYDELL'S Self- laying, Endless Railway, described in detail at page 171 in the present Number of this Journal. Up to that date the experience of the Institution had led them to prefer four-wheeled carriages to two-wheeled ones, as being safer when going down hill, and drawing less heavily over very soft ground, and this apparatus was in the first instance fitted to the hinder wheels of a four-wheeled carriage, it not being practicable to fit it to the. fore wheels without preventing them from turning under the carriage. The great advantage of the railway was at once apparent, as the wheels, which without the railway had been found to sink 16 inches in the loose shingle, were now supported by the railway entirely above it, whilst the rail-boards (answering to the sleepers on an ordinary railway) merely pressed flat on its surface. As, however, the fore wheels buried themselves deeply in the shingle, and greatly impeded the progress of the carriage, it became evident that two wheels only would be more advantageous, when the whole weight of the boat and carriage would fall on the rail. Two descriptions of two-wheeled carriages were then designed by the Inspector of Life-boats to the Insti- tution : the one, built by RANSOMES & SIMS, carries the boat suspended under an iron axle, cranked upwards; the boat is hojsted up by two screws, which hook to rope- slings that pass round her under the keel.

These screws being fixed at pleasure, at varying distances in rear of the axle, the weight of the boat when suspended to them can be made to exactly counteract the weight of the shafts, so as to relieve the shaft horses of any undue weight on their backs. The boat can be disconnected from the slings in an instant on launching, and 3 or 4 men can raise by the screws the heaviest boat. This carriage weighs only about half as much as the four-wheeled ones last described, and about one-third as much as Colonel COLQUHOUN'S carriage. Whether fitted with the endless railway, or with broad wheels of large diameter without the rail, it is a light and convenient carriage.

The second two-wheeled carriage above referred to was built by Messrs. BOYDELL & GLASIER, of London, and is fitted with the endless railway ; it is of very simple con- struction, consisting merely of 2 wheels, a wooden axle, cranked downwards, and a short keelway, from 8 to 10 feet long. Its whole weight, including the railway, is only 15 cwt., and its cost 30 guineas. It is chiefly intended for the lighter and smaller descriptions of life-boats, and to be drawn by the boat's crew without the aid of horse power. Three of these carriages have been recently built for the Society, and so far as can be judged from the trial yet made of them, there appears every probability of their perfectly answering their intended use.

In addition to the carriages above de- scribed, one on the suspension principle on two wheels has been constructed at Aber- deen for the life-boat at that place; it is, .however, of more costly character, and differs in points of detail from the one already described. A suspension carriage on four wheels was also, some years since, constructed at the Cape of Good Hope for the life-boat at Table Bay, by H. D. P. CUNNINGHAM, Esq., R.N., the ingenious inventor of the self-reefing topsails described in another part of this Journal (No. XV. page 8), who was at that time secretary to the English admiral at the Cape station.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM has recently constructed for this Institution a carriage on this prin- ciple, but with some improvements on his former carriage. The boat is hoisted up, in this carriage, by an ingenious joint appli- cation of the lever and pulley.

The above account of some of the prin- cipal life-boat carriages in use is not in- tended to be more than a mere outline or rough sketch of them, as it would be im- possible to convey a perfectly clear idea of such complicated machines without a very full description in detail of each, with accompanying diagrams, which we cannot conveniently give.