An extract from The Life-boat, or Journal of the National Shipwreck Institution, July, 1854.

Ix the autumn of 1853, a new life-boat was stationed at Dover by the Dover Humane Society to replace their old one. This boat was constructed by Mr.

Clarkson, of a material which he has patented, composed of alternate layers or laminae of canvass, cork, and wood, united to each other with marine glue.

She is 28 ft. long, 7| ft. wide, and 3 ft. 2 in. deep, with a water-tight deck, and having raised end air-boxes or tanks, as in the boats of Mr. Peake and Mr. Beeching, to give her self- righting power. Her ballast, the dis- position, character and amount of which in a life-boat is of much impor- tance, is differently arranged from that in either of the descriptions of boats above alluded to; Mr. Beeching's boats are ballasted with water in an enclosed tank; Mr. Peake's by an iron keel attached to the under part of the wooden one; but Mr. Clarkson has left a longitudinal channel or opening in the deck of his boat amidships fore and aft above the keel, in which pigs or bars of iron are stowed up to the level of the deck, and so secured that they should not fall out in the event of the boat upsetting.

Although the ballast placed in this raised position above the keel will not act with the same powerful leverage on the boat's heeling over, yet for flat and shallow beaches it would possess the advantage of making her draw less water, and would also render her motion more easy when rowing with a broadside sea on.

The durability of Mr. Clarkson's material remains to be proved, but to all appearance it has all the solidity and strength of a wooden boat, if not more, has greater elasticity, and so would be less liable to injury from concussion against a rock or other hard substance, and from the nature of the material would not, like a wooden boat, become leaky after being long out of the water. Another peculiarity of this boat is lightness, her weight not being more than 27 cwt., which is about a quarter less than that of a wooden boat of the same dimensions and fitted in the same manner.

Altogether Mr. Clarkson, who is not a professional boat-builder, or at all acquainted with ordinary boat-build- ing, has displayed great skill and in- genuity in the construction of this boat, which was in great part put together by his own hand. She is also very favourably spoken of by the coastguard, and others, who have taken her off on trial. The Lords of the Admiralty have given permission for her to be hoisted up to davits on the east side of the Royal Pier..