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.

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    When a person who has fallen through, and is still struggling above water or hanging on the edges of the ice, cannot be approached to be assisted by hand, this rope is thrown to him. On its falling within his reach, he grasps it with one hand just above the oval piece of cork, which enables him to retain it in his grasp; and is thus supported, while, with the other hand, he places the noose over his head, and under his arm; and by pulling the wooden button towards his chest, adjusts it to his size. He is then easily drawn by the rope either to a firm part of the ice or the shore. A grapple on a rod.—The rod is formed of several joints, and may b© lengthened at will. The joints were 6 feet long. The ends and sockets of the joints are all of the same size, that they may, as occasion requires, be instantly put together, without the delay of selection. They are caught, and held in each socket by a spring, but to guard against the possibility of their separation, a rope is fixed to a ring in the grapple, and kept in the hand with the rod, by which, if the rod should, against probability, break, the body is still held, and may be weighed as well as by the rod itself. At the ends of the arms of the grapple are sharp points for the purpose of catching hold of the sunk body; but so guarded, that they cannot, by any accident, puncture deep enough to produce any material injury to the body; and, when it is considered, how little force is necessary to raise in the water a body, but very little heavier than the water itself, no laceration need be apprehended. When the fracture is not of great extent, and the ice near the verge is strong enough to bear his weight, a man may stand, and feel in every direction (and from the length of which it is capable) a considerable way round with this grapple for the body of the person who has sunk: whether, therefore, he has gone down obliquely, and, rising, is confined under the sound ice, or is at the bottom, but has been carried by a cur¬ rent under the ice to some distance from the spot through which he broke or has sunk vertically, in a depth of still water, this instrument