Located in Lymington, Hampshire
Sir Harold Dudley Clayton’s Hydraulic Steam Lifeboat: City of Glasgow, 1894. This fine builder’s presentation scale model has a gilt brass funnel, polished brass rudder, capstan, anchor, binnacle and fittings with side grab ropes. The hull is painted in RNLI blue and red, with a pink keel. It is raised on a turned brass support within an ebonised glazed case on a stand and has a presentation plaque inscribed ‘Hydraulic Steam Lifeboat City of Glasgow’ Built For the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, by R & H Green, Blackwall Yard, London, 1894′.
Provenance: Sir Harold Dudley Clayton. The following pages are dedicated to the substantial and fascinating archive of Sir Harold Dudley Clayton. This includes the lifeboat model above, over 100 yacht designs and naval architects’ drawings, photograph albums, photographic glass slides and a model of his yacht Coquette.
Steam-powered lifeboats. Earlier in the 19th century steam had transformed Britain’s industrial landscape through the development of steamships and the railways. But tending a coal-fired boiler in a boat that is pitching and rolling in heavy seas would not have been straightforward. Sixty years after the idea was first mooted by Sir William Hillary and after extensive trials, the first steam-cum-sail boat Duke of Northumberland went into service at Harwich Lifeboat Station in September 1890. The hydraulic steam-driven lifeboat used...
Category
19th Century English Antique Ebony Furniture