Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/196

184 sides under the thwarts, which make it insubmergible, and is fitted with cork fenders running along the outer sides to protect it against collision with hulls or wreckage. Its weight is from 700 to 1,000 pounds. It is guided by a long steering oar, the steersman standing in the stern. In the hands of the skilled surfmen of our coasts, it is capable of marvelous action, and few sights are more impressive than the passage out through the flashing breakers of the frail red boat, lightly swimming on the vast intumescence of the surge, held in suspension before the roaring and tumultuous comber, or darting forward as the wall of water breaks and crumbles, obedient to the oars of the impassive crew. Though sometimes thrown back and broken in desperate and unavailing efforts at a launch against a resistless



sea, this boat, which might be upset easily, has rarely in the history of the service been capsized in passing through the surf, so great is the skill of her gallant oarsmen; and certain great surfmen, like Captain Hildreth, of Station 39, New Jersey, say that in it they will face any sea in which a life-boat can live.

On the Lakes and the Pacific coast, where steep shores or piers command deep water, and by mechanical contrivances heavy boats can be launched directly into it, the English life-boat is in general use. This wonderful contrivance, the result of a century of repeated effort, is of massive strength and stability. It is built of double diagonals of mahogany. The size generally in use in this country is about twenty-seven feet in length, a little over seven feet broad, three feet eight inches deep, carrying eight oars, double-banked, and weighing when empty 4,000 pounds. It is self-righting and self-bailing. In other words, when thrown over, which is difficult to be done, by a heavy sea, it instantly rights and empties. The first of these two extraordinary characteristics, to which a great number of advantages are sacrificed, is effected by a ponderous false keel of iron, which gives the lower part of the boat a constant determination. toward the water, while an equal