Purpose-built lifeboat (Greathead's 'Original')
Bote salvavidas (el 'Original' de Greathead)
- Date
- 1785-1790 · confidence medium
- Place
- South Shields, Tyne and Wear, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Henry Greathead; William Wouldhave and Lionel Lukin
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A rowing boat with a curved double-ended hull, cork-lined, with air boxes, designed to rescue shipwreck survivors in heavy seas. It gave rise to coastal rescue stations.
Authorship is disputed: Lukin patented an 'unsinkable' boat in 1785, Wouldhave proposed the cork-lined hull, and Greathead built the first purpose-built boat in 1790. Nineteenth-century committees did not settle the quarrel.
What it led to
- the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (1824)
- coastal rescue networks
- self-righting and motor lifeboats