The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [5]
Manby seized on the belief that something more must be done to prevent the deaths of shipwreck victims beached on the indifferent shores of Britain, if not for compassionate reasons, then certainly for civilised ones. The destruction of the gun-brig Snipe off the coast of Yarmouth in 1807 only confirmed his views. One hundred and forty-four lives were lost after the ship ran aground during a gale less than one hundred yards from the shore. Manby watched the ship beat itself to death on the rocks, and listened impotently to the cries of those still on board as they died. Over the next few months, he began experimenting with possible solutions. He concentrated his efforts on the idea of throwing a line from the shore to a distressed ship, using a rope fixed to the end of a canon ball. Several early versions failed spectacularly: the rope was either burned through by the gunpowder, or, in those rare instances when the ball and rope successfully reached their target, only managed to set what remained of the ship on fire. At the same time, he tinkered with the notion of an unsinkable boat. During a storm, small row-boats which were used to ferry survivors from the wreck to the shore almost invariably sank, either capsized by the seas or flooded by waves. Manby sealed several small wooden barrels with pitch and fixed them to the sides of a small, undecked boat, providing primitive but workable buoyancy chambers.
By the summer of 1807, his prototype mortar line was ready for testing. Until then, his colleagues and neighbours had watched Manby’s eccentric experiments with derision. But once he produced something that threatened the wreckers, who took their livelihoods from the plunder of injured ships, he became a more serious danger. As the wreckers saw it, he was not only removing their prized source of income, he was also directly contradicting the will of God. God, they reasoned, had sent the storm that had wrecked the ship which they took as their reward. Any interference was therefore a form of devilish meddling. And so, helped by the knowledge that Manby could not swim, the wreckers tried to drown him. Several local sailors volunteered to help Manby demonstrate his boat and mortar line, and, when the boat was a good way from the shore, deliberately capsized it. Manby, just managing to keep afloat, was finally saved by his own efforts and two conscience-stricken spectators.
His determination was, if anything, increased. In 1808, the small brig Elizabeth, carrying a crew of seven sailors, became snared on the sandbanks near Yarmouth during a storm. Manby, seizing his opportunity, positioned himself and his mortar line on the shore and managed to fire the line successfully onto the ship. To do so required accurate calculation, since visibility was minimal and the mortar risked being damaged by both rain and salt water. Manby fired; the rope coiled outwards to sea. There was a pause, and then, slowly, the rope tautened. Someone, it seemed, was still alive and had taken up the line. Once he was confident that the link from ship to shore was secure, Manby sent out one of his ballasted row-boats. When it finally groped its way back to shore, seven sodden survivors crawled exhausted onto the beach. As they later testified, all of them would have almost certainly drowned without