Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/201

Rh made of two pieces of wood, three by two inches thick and ten feet long, crossed near the top, so as to form a sort of X, and bolted together, is erected, and the shore end of the hawser is drawn over the intersection. A sand-anchor, composed of two pieces of hard wood, six feet long, eight inches wide, and two inches thick, crossed at their centers, bolted together, and furnished at the center with a stout iron ring, is laid obliquely in a trench dug behind the crotch. An iron hook, from which runs a strap of rope, having at its other end an iron ring called a bull's-eye, is now fastened into the ring of the sand-anchor. This strap connects by the bull's-eye with a double pulley-block at the end of the hawser behind the crotch, by which the hawser is drawn and kept taut. The trench is solidly filled in, and the imbedded sand-anchor, held by the lateral strain against the side of the trench, sustains the slender bridge of rope constituted by the hawser.

If there are a large number of persons to be saved, the life-car is used. This is a covered boat of galvanized sheet-iron, eleven feet four inches long, four feet eight inches wide, and three feet deep, weighing 225 pounds, which will hold six or seven persons. It is covered with a hatch, and has a few perforations made in the top from the inside, which admit air, while their raised edges exclude water. It is suspended on the hawser by bails and rings, to which are also attached the hauling-lines, all these ropes being arranged to it before the hawser is fastened behind the crotch. It is evident that, by pulling on one part of the hauling-line, the life-saving crew can send out the suspended life-car to the vessel above the surface of the sea, and, when it has received its load, draw it back to the shore by pulling on the other part. Its use has been uniformly successful, 201 persons having been saved by it from the immigrant ship Ayrshire at its first