AS THE RNLI celebrates its 150th anniversary, it is appropriate to acknowledge the help it has given many lifesaving services throughout the world. This help has taken many forms, one of the most significant being in the area of coastal rescue craft design. The United States has been a beneficiary in this area and, included in the collection of more than 80 historic small craft, ranging from primitive dugouts to sailing yachts and working boats, at The Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia, is an English coastal lifeboat built in 1873 by T. and W. Forrestt and Son of Norway Yard, Limehouse.

Asked to advise on lifeboat design for use in America, the RNLI arranged with Forrestt and Son for the US Life Saving Service to buy a boat then under construction for a lifeboat station at Dunwich, Suffolk, where there is a flat beach similar to those along the Atlantic coastline of the United States.

The lifeboat ordered for the American service was a standard type of which more than 100 were built both for the RNLI and several overseas lifesaving services: 30' length overall, 7' 1" extreme beam, and 3' 6" depth. Planking was 1" mahogany of double diagonal construction. Large air chambers at bow and stern combined with a selfrighting, and four relieving valves could free the boat of water in 24 seconds. The lifeboat was fitted with four thwarts for eight oars, double banked, and a twomast lug rig. Total cost, including carriage and all equipment, was £531.

Packing, shipping and insurance brought the total cost to £643 17s.

This lifeboat was given regular RNLI harbour trials on July 21, 1873, and the surveyor's certificate is in the records of the US Life Saving Service filed in the National Archives in Washington, DC.

Two days after her trials, the lifeboat was shipped from London to New York aboard the National Steamship Company steamer Denmark, The US revenue cutter Grant then carried her to Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, on the western shore of the entrance to Narragansett Bay, arriving there on August 25.

The lifeboat was then given exhaustive tests. Captain J. H. Merryman, of the Revenue Cutter Service, assigned as Inspector to the US Life Saving Service was, during this period, undertaking several research projects to develop the best equipment for use at US lifeboat stations. In his opinion, the English lifeboat was 'almost perfect for the purpose intended', but he thought her weight, about 4,000 Ib was too much for the flat, sandy Atlantic coastline beaches and too much boat for the small American crews to handle.

Captain Merryman designed a somewhat smaller and lighter lifeboat 26' 8" in length, based on the English model, and this boat was built in fair numbers for use at stations where the boat couldbe kept at a mooring or launched from a slipway. From this boat a series of coastal lifeboat designs were developed over the years, all double-ended, selfrighting and self-bailing, their ancestry clearly rooted in the English lifeboat of 1873.

Detailed records of the English lifeboat's career in the US Life Saving Service, which was merged with the US Revenue Cutter Service in 1915 to form the US Coast Guard, are not complete.

However, it is known she was on active duty at the Sandy Hook, New Jersey, lifeboat station in 1890.

After her retirement from active duty, the Coast Guard used her as a display at exhibitions. At the Second International Lifeboat Conference held in Paris in June 1928, Oliver M. Maxam, then Chief, Division of Operations, US Coast Guard said: 'I am very pleased to remind you that our lifesaving service at its outset used a boat imported from England in 1872 (actually 1873). Taking our inspiration from this boat, we have constructed a type of boat which we call "English Model Lifeboat". The 34' boat which succeeded the English model is derived from this type, and the 36' boat which we have today is itself derived from the 34' boat.' When the lifeboat was presented to The Mariners Museum in 1939, she no longer had her original rig and there were few fittings. She had also been repainted many times in contemporary US Coast Guard colours. Just 100 years following the English lifeboat's arrival in the United States, The Mariners Museum began an extensive restoration to bring the lifeboat back to her 1873 condition, using as a guide an original 'presentation' model of the lifeboat Maud Hargreaves built in 1878 for Dartmouth, South Devon. The Museum is also deeply indebted to Lt-Commander W. L. G.

Dutton, at that time chief inspector of lifeboats, and his staff, and to Grahame Farr, honorary archivist (historical) of the Lifeboat Enthusiasts Society, for providing background information and most of the historical details that are available.

The Mariners Museum also has in its historic small boat collection one of the 26' 8" lifeboats designed by Captain Merryman on the basis of the 1873 English lifeboat. There is also a clinkerbuilt, double-ended surfboat on a launching carriage which was used by the Humane Society of Massachusetts at one of its lifeboat stations on Nantucket Island during the latter part of the 19th century; this boat is typical of the small, light surfboats which were used extensively along the eastern seaboard by both the Humane Society and the US Life Saving Service at that time.

These boats, together with the English lifeboat, several beach apparatus carts and metallic lifecars, models, and an excellent library, enable the Museum to provide a major reference source in the United States on the history of coastal rescue craft..