Since the earliest lifeboats in the late 1700s, up until the 1920s, most ‘service boats’ of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution were sail-and-oar designs. The use of sails extended the range of a lifeboat and made for a less exhausted crew once they reached a casualty.
From shore-based companies of salvage men who saved lives… but who also claimed money when they rescued property as well… the more honourable and heroic tradition of the lifeboatman was established when the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, later the RNLI, was founded in 1824.
The standard lifeboat was a double-ended design, broader and deeper than a whaleboat, and with prominent buoyancy chambers fore and aft designed to make it unsinkable, even when full to the gunwales with water.
A prominent builder of lifeboats just before the institute was founded, was William Plenty. Originally from Southampton, Plenty had moved his business to Newbury and began building sailing and pulling lifeboats in 1816. His designs caught the attention of Admiral Pellew and by 1824 there were a reported 17 Plenty lifeboats stationed around British coasts.
These double-ended pulling boats were between 18ft (5.5m) and 26ft (8m) in length, powered by four to ten oars. Inside their hull and fore and aft they had shaped air-cases. They were truly double-ended and could operate a rudder from either end.
As the institution got going, a more standard design was adopted, developed by George Palmer, ex-East India Company commander and future Essex MP, who also served as deputy chairman of the Institution for over 25 years. His 26ft 8in (8.1m) LOA, 6ft 2in (1.9m) beam lifeboat was a six-oar whaler type (though broader) with buoyancy in the ends and
