Welcome to Forum #457


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Posted by Joe Cimoch [75.131.145.86] on Friday, September 19, 2014 at 18:31:55 :

Welcome to Forum #457.
Picture and information from Tommy in NC

I ran across the attached photo of an old FFPW taken on Ocracoke Island, which is part of North Carolina's Outer Banks. I don't have a date of the photo, but probably in the 60's. The truck is hauling a "life car" (which most people refer to as a lifeboat), and it is towing a "beach apparatus cart" which contained messenger and hawser lines. In the bed of the FFPW is a Lyle gun. The FFPW would have replaced the old horse drawn rig, and would have driven out on the soft sand to set up a lifesaving operation of a vessel grounded in the surf several hundred yards offshore. The Lyle gun, is used to shoot a line out to a ship.

When a ship wrecked close to shore and the seas were too rough for boats, then the Service could use another method to reach the stranded mariners by stringing a strong hawser (line) from the shore to the ship. To propel the line to the ship, a cannon-like gun, called the Lyle gun, was used. This shot a projectile up to 600 yards. The projectile carried a small messenger line by which the shipwrecked sailors were able to pull out the heavier hawser. Once the line was secure, a life car could be pulled back and forth between the wreck and the safety of the shore. The life car looked like a tiny, primitive submarine. The life car could be hauled over, through, or even under the seas. After the hatch in the top of the car was sealed, there was enough air within the device to accommodate eleven people for three minutes. It is hard to envision eleven people crowding into the car's small compartment but, as one surfman put it, people "in that extremity are not apt to stand on the order of their going."
Typically, a life car carried four to six people. Life cars were heavy and difficult to handle. Also, as those in distress evolved from crowded immigrant packets with many on board to small commercial schooners with less than a dozen on board, the life car was widely replaced by the breeches buoy. A breeches buoy resembles a life preserver ring with canvas pants attached. It could be pulled out to the ship by pulleys, enabling the endangered sailor to step into the life ring and pants and then be pulled to safety much more easily than the heavier life car.
A beach apparatus cart carried all the equipment needed to rig the breeches buoy and could be pulled by the crew or horses to the wreck site. The boats, beach apparatus, and life cars were only as good as the surfmen who served in the U.S. Life-Saving Service. The man in charge of the station, officially known as the keeper, was called captain by his crew and was an expert in the handling of small boats and men.



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