An address to the President ... and members, of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce : occasioned by the conduct of a committee of the Society. Together with a vindication of the author from an imputation ... that he had pirated his system of rescue from shipwreck on a lee-shore, from a previous plan of Lieut. Bell / [George William Manby].

  • Manby, George William, 1765-1854
Date:
1816
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address to the President ... and members, of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce : occasioned by the conduct of a committee of the Society. Together with a vindication of the author from an imputation ... that he had pirated his system of rescue from shipwreck on a lee-shore, from a previous plan of Lieut. Bell / [George William Manby]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/66 (page 7)
    may be used with every probability of finding him, and a certainty of bringing him to the surface after he is found. Aware it may sometimes happen, that when the body is found, the attempt to raise it may give an impulse to it which will make it rise faster than the hand will follow it with the drag, and consequently it may disengage itself, and another attempt to hook it become necessary, I had thought of barbing the points as in the subjoined figure; in which a a are barbs fitting with springs into mortices on the sides of the point. b b are continuations of the barbed springs, on the pressure of which between the finger and thumb, the parts a a are completely buried in the mortices on the sides of the point. The prejudice from dread of laceration, which I had no hope of suc¬ ceeding against, made me, however, suppress this addition to the drag ; though, in my own opinion, no harm to the naked body at all consi¬ derable could happen from its use. A third of an inch is the utmost depth to which the point of the drag can pierce: the barbs, after it has once been caught, will hold it on the point, and prevent the possi¬ bility of disengagement, which might happen from the unbarbed points, and would render it liable to a second puncture. When the body is brought up, and in secure hold, it is but to press the springs, the barbs completely retire, and the point is drawn out without the slightest ob¬ struction. Whenever there is occasion to search for a person who has sunk in his dress, the drag with the points thus barbed is, without the possibility of an objection, the best instrument. As, however, the ice may be too weak or too widely broken to allow the point, at which a person may have sunk, to be reached by a wieldy length of the rod, some means auxiliary to the grapple were needed ; and I therefore provided light ladders, which may be made either to fold with hinges, and be unfolded to the required length, or fit into one another by sockets, and so lengthened by adding ladder to ladder as the occasion may demand.