Hi Andre,
There is a very long history involved in the RNLI dating back to the 1820's and far to involved to go into infurum.
However, the main crux of the matter is that the history places many boats on the sea shore, and there were two basic types of launch in the early years (not counting those which had to be kept afloat in a harbour for topographical reasons) and these were:
1) the carriage launched boats, where boats were kept on a carriage and drawn to the gently shelving beaches and tide which had receeded too far out at low tide.These carriages were drawn by *(usually) horses ( and later motorised tractors) and are still used at stations such as Lytham St Annes,Lancashire, Wells Next the Sea,Norfolk
2) the slipway launched boats where the topography and geography and state of tides allowed the Quick launch into seas at any state of the tide.However although there are still a number of stations which still operate slip launch ( Cromer in Norfolk and Roa Island, Peel, Walney, and Douglas Isle of man just to name a few, more and more boats in the modern RNLI are now being kept afloat.
However, all those carriage and slip launched boats needed somethiong within the hull which would allow them to be able to be dragged either back onto the carriage or up the slipway after recovery and then to be tethered either to the carriage or on the slip, and that is why the boats had ruffle holes.
As for being kept afloat, at some stages of a storm with on shore winds driving into a harbour it was at times quite immpossible to "launch" a lifeboat, especially either a pulling/sailing boat ( without engines) or the early single screw motor lifeboat that had very little power, ant this could be trecherous, as shown in 1953 wein the Arbroath Lifeboat ( a twin screw Liverpool class) was capsized at the harbour entrance with the loss of 6 of her seven crew, and so the slip launch gave that extra momentum for the boat to gain sea way before she could be overwhelmed by mountainous seas.Harbour entrances are notorious, in foul weather, to negotiate.
That is not to say that the more modern boats don't have similar addition, as the new Tamar class, the Mersey and the Tyne class all have a type generic to their own hulls, but not quite as pronounced.
Hope that helps.
If you want to know more about lifeboat design, I would suggest you go to your local library and borrow two books which have a much greater knowledge than I could ever have, and they are:
1) Lifeboat Design and Development by Eric Fry, and
2) RNLI Motor Lifeboats, A centuary of RNLI Motor Lifeboats by Nicholas Leach
Both superb books and well worth a read.
cheers,neil.
Author
Topic: RNLB Helen Wycherley (Read 160253 times)