Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/590

 570 L I E L I F or forfeiture of the Hen. The same effect would follow of course from any agreement by the lien holder to give up his right while retaining possession of the property. Again as a general rule lien means only a right of deten tion, not a power of sale, a fact which distinguishes it from a pledge of property in security for a loan. But in special cases powers of sale have by statute or judicial decision been added to liens. Thus innkeepers now have, in addition to their ordinary right of lien, power to sell goods and chattels left with them after six weeks (41 & 42 Viet. c. 38). In the United States the principle of the particulir lien has been developed in a notable manner in protecting the rights of workmen employed in building. At common law, the building belongs absolutely to the owner of the soil ; and accordingly, when a house is erected by contract, the contractor may receive payment from his employer and may fail to pay the labourers he has employed, who are consequently left without redress. The &quot; mechanics liens,&quot; created by statute in several of the American States, give labourers a lien over the build ing which they have erected for their unpaid wages. Notice having been filed in the prescribed manner, they acquire a right to have their wages paid out of the property, which may if necessary be sold for that purpose. A similar preferential charge, not depending on possession, is recognized by the law in various cases, and goes by the name of lieu. Thus in equity an unpaid vendor has a charge for the amount of the purchase money, or ths balance thereof, over the estate, although it may no longer be in his possession. Charges of this kind are sometimes denominated equitable liens. Of the same nature is the charge acquired over a ship by a person who has supplied her with necessaries for the voyage under a lawful contract with the master (maritime lien). LIERRE, or LIEU, a town of Belgium, in the province of Antwerp, 9 J miles south-east of Antwerp (on the railway to Malines), at the junction of the Great and Little Neethe. It is a busy place of 15,G59 inhabitants (1874), and manufactures silk, lace, and shoes, beetroot sugar, and a peculiar kind of white beer known as cavesse. The church of St Gommarius (in plan a Latin cross with a lofty tower in front) is one of the most notable buildings of its class in Belgium. It was commenced in 1425, but not completed for more than a century. Of the fine stained glass windows three were presented by the emperor Maximilian. Lierre, which dates from the 9th century, owed much to the favour of the dukes of Brabant, to whose territory it belonged. The more important facts in its annals are the celebration of the marriage of Philip the Fair with Joanna of Castile (1496) ; the residence in the town of Christian II. of Denmark during his exile ; and the con tests between the Dutch and Belgian forces in 1830. Joseph II. ordered the fortifications to be razed in 1784. LIFE ASSURANCE. See INSURANCE. LIFEBOAT. It will be convenient to consider here, not the lifeboat simply, but also other means of saving life at sea. When it is borne in mind that the vast commerce of such a country as Great Britain extends to every part of the world, that the arrivals and departures from the ports of the country in one year average six hundred thousand vessels, that these are manned by more than two hundred thousand men and boys, and carry goods to the estimated value of six hundred millions sterling, with unknown thousands of passengers, that its seaboard is nearly 5000 miles in extent, many parts of it being exceed ingly dangerous to shipping, that about two thousand wrecks occur every year on its shores, and above seven hundred lives are lost, the necessity that exists for a well- organized system of life-saving apparatus becomes very apparent. It is satisfactory to be able to add that this well-organized system is most efficiently provided by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, with its splendid fleet of two hundred and seventy-one lifeboats, and by the Rocket Service. The number of lives saved annually, either by the lifeboats or by special exertions for which the insti tution has granted rewards, averages in round numbers nine hundred, and by far the greater proportion of these (four-fifths) are saved by lifeboats. These lifeboats, too, are the means of saving every year from twenty to thirty vessels which, owing to stress of weather, exhausted men, &c., would almost certainly have been lost but for the aid afforded by the fresh and experienced lifeboat crews. The qualities of the lifeboat first deserve our attention. These are such that this boat is able to live in seas, and go into positions of danger, that would overwhelm ordinary boats or insure their destruction. Eight important quali ties are possessed by it in a very high degree : (1) buoyancy ; (2) great lateral stability, or resistance to up setting; (3) the power to right itself if upset; (4) the power of immediate self-discharge when filled with water ; (5) strength ; (6) stowage room for a large number of passengers ; (7) speed against a heavy sea ; (8) facility in launching and taking the shore. The buoyancy of the institution s lifeboat, or its inability to sink, be it ever so deeply laden, is secured chiefly by means of a watertight deck or floor, air-cases round the sides inboard, and two large air-chambers, one in the bow, the other in the stern. The &quot; extra buoyancy &quot; thus obtained cannot be too great so long as it does not inter fere with the space necessary for working the boat and stowing shipwrecked persons. The air-cases round the sides serve also to confine any water shipped to the centre of the boat, a point of great importance. There is an air tight space between the boat s floor and its bottom, filled partly with air partly with cork-ballast, which gives it additional buoyancy, but the air-chambers above the floor would float the boat even if she were stove in and this space filled with water. In a 33-feet boat the buoyancy obtained by all its chambers is equal to 11 tons. Stability is obtained chiefly by means of ballast. Im mense difficulty was experienced in arriving at the present form of the institution s splendid boat, because qualities of differing value had to be sacrificed to each other in due proportion. Thus, while breadth of beam secured stability, it seriously interfered with the self-righting quality. Bal last, therefore, in the form of a heavy iron keel, instead of breadth, became necessary to give the requisite stability. Fig. 1 represents, let us say, the 33-feet, double-banked, ten- oared, self-righting, and self-emptying lifeboat of the institution on its transporting carriage, ready for launching ; figs. 2 and 3, respectively, a section and a bird s-eye view of the same. The FIG. L Ten-Oared Lifeboat. breadth is 8 feet, with stowage room for forty-three persons thirty passengers and thirteen of a crew. The festooned lines (fig. 1) enable people in the water to clarnber inboard even without assist ance. The shaded parts of figs. 2 and 3 show the position of the air-cases. The white oblong space in fig. 3 shows the free space available for crew and passengers. In fig. 2 are seen the depth to which the air-cases descend, and the height to which the bow and stern air-chambers ascend above the gunwale, also the ballast space between the floor and the keel. The self-righting power is due to the large elevated air- chambers in bow and stern, coupled with great sheer, or rise fore and aft, of gunwale, to the iron keel, which weighs.