Sternpost Articles in India Rubber... Sinking and drowning are overlooked in the canon of British inventions, says Dave Selby
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ince 1987 Classic Boat has to Halkett: “Is that a canoe in your made a massive contribution pocket, or are you just pleased to to popularising sinking, and see me?” However, despite the closely associated discipline accidentally inventing the puffer of drowning, not least through jacket, Halkett was rather deflated the stirring and inspirational when the Admiralty wrote back efforts of our readers, some of saying: “My Lords are of an whom have even managed to do opinion that your invention is it on the Norfolk Broads, despite extremely clever and ingenious, its distinct lack of low-lying coral and that it might be useful in atolls. Indeed, the fact that exploring and surveying you’ve been discovering new expeditions, but they do not ways to do it for over 35 years consider that it would be shows commendable applicable for general purposes in commitment and is a tribute to the Naval Service.” Snooty, or that spirit of innovation and what! Nevertheless explorer John invention which makes you Franklin used a larger version on proud to be British. his 1845 Arctic expedition and Yet even in the centuries was never seen again. before that, when sinking-related Meanwhile, evolutions and leisure drowning was mostly the further prototypes of Halkett’s preserve of a lucky few within a PIC: BONHAMS poncho boat can be seen every five-mile radius of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, there were moves year at the Southampton Boat Show on stand C351 or C352, afoot to democratise the pastime, and I’ve found evidence that in where a company that changes its name every year is running a addition to inventing everything else including the Spinning Jenny, crowd-funding campaign offering investors the opportunity to get Sinclair C5 and Rickets, Britain also invented drowning and in at the bottom – quite literally – of what promises to be a sinking, as this photograph of a rubber dinghy at the 1851 Great buoyant market – but then again may be not. Exhibition of that year proves. I really am not kidding, and if any Back at the 1851 Great Exhibition the extraordinary Classic Boat reader can find an earlier photo of one I’ll give you photograph of the stand with the rubber dinghy on was captioned one of my three-dozen spare Seafarer echo sounders (PP9 battery “Articles in India Rubber,” and intriguingly ascribes it to not included). Macintosh, presumably as the manufacturer of the products on The race to revolutionise recreational drowning dates back to display. However, if you look closer, you’ll notice rather 1823 when Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh developed a way of disconcertingly that one of the contraptions in the boat looks bonding rubber to fabric to create a waterproof raincoat, several suspiciously like a haemorrhoid cushion, which points to the rather years before the invention of rain by another Brit. In 1839 the unnecessary invention of piles by a vindictive British inventor who Duke of Wellington who invented the sandwich or cardigan, or felt spurned by the Admiralty. possibly the rather rubbery Wellington sandwich – I’m never sure This fascinating 1851 glimpse of the future is astonishing in which – devised an inflatable pontoon. Its success at floating can be another way, because the photograph was credited to none other gauged by the fact that he then developed the than Henry Fox Talbot who granted exhibition Wellington boot. organisers use of the new pioneering technique he first “Since 1987, Meanwhile in the early 1840s Macintosh got into made public in 1835. Yes, I know Louis Daguerre was a patent spat with an uppity American you’ve never also up to something at around the same, but he Classic Boat heard of by the name of Charles Goodyear over the wasn’t British. has done much vulcanising process of stabilising rubber. This in turn The six million visitors who thronged to the Great to popularise led to the invention of lawyers, which further spurred Exhibition in London’s Hyde Park – around a third of sinking, and the greatest scientific minds in Britain to develop a the population of Britain – included luminaries such means of drowning them. An early attempt was the as Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Karl Marx, its closely “boat cloak” personal drowning system developed by Charles Dickens and Tom Cunliffe, then aged 12, who associated naval lieutenant Peter Halkett which transformed a bunked off school for the day to bag this ex-display discipline of rubberised poncho into a rubber dinghy by means of early Avon Red Crest at a massive discount. To this drowning.” built-in bellows in the pocket. This was one of day he swears by at, and quite often at it. The rest is history’s great lost opportunities because if only Mae history. Come to think of it, I regret what I said about West had lived earlier she would no doubt have said lawyers. I’ll be sunk without one.
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CLASSIC BOAT APRIL 2022
