Lionel Lukin

Lionel Lukin (18 May 1742 (Great Dunmow, Essex, England) - 16 February 1834 (Hythe, Kent, England) is considered by some to have been the inventor of the lifeboat (although see William Wouldhave for the competing claim).

The first boat known to embody the principles of design integral to the lifeboat was to come from France, although it was never used as such in any rescue attempt.

Experiments with the boat were carried out on the river Seine, it having been fitted with stem and stern air cases, was able to remain afloat when filled with water, and could also right itself promptly when overturned. For the credit of employing these principles specifically to assist in rescue missions at sea, we must return to England.

Upon the death of the third Baron Crewe in the year 1721 the ‘Crewe Trust’ was established, and administered from Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland.

Amongst the many early works of this charitable trust a number of initiatives were introduced for the protection and assistance of seamen. In time the Crewe Trust evolved an elaborate organisation for preserving life from shipwreck, involving many local people in readiness to assist with the hazardous undertaking of rescue at sea. So much so that the establishment of the first Lifeboat station in the world was a further development in the Trust’s progress.

Born in Essex, at Great Dunmow in 1742, Lionel Lukin became credited with the invention of the Lifeboat after some experimentation along the French lines in 1784 with his own conversion of a Norway ‘yawl’ which he tested out on the river Thames, and in 1785 having received the personal encouragement of the Prince Regent, Lukin took out a patent.

The boatmen of Ramsgate were most unfortunate in overlooking the opportunity they might have been given when Lukin’s first patented ‘unimmergible’, as the boat was entrusted to a Ramsgate pilot for further testing, but the unnamed pilot, regrettably used it principally, it is suspected, for the purposes of smuggling.

The features that had been incorporated into Lukin’s design were a projecting gunwale some nine inches thick amidships, tapering off toward stem and stern, with a hollow watertight enclosure built into the boat for increased buoyancy. As well as the watertight boxed enclosures front and stern, he also added a false iron keel for additional weight to help keep the boat upright.

Lukin’s next model, made in 1786 for Dr John Sharpe, Archdeacon of Northumberland, who had asked him to convert a ‘coble’ by including in it, the principles of his patent. The new boat was duly dispatched to Sharpe, in Bamburgh, to serve for a number of years as the first known purpose built Lifeboat.

Lukin died at Hythe in Kent in 1834, having become a successful and well respected coach builder and inventor. On his tombstone he had inscribed with pride:

‘This Lionel Lukin was the first who built a life~boat, and was the original inventor of that principal of safety by which many lives and property have been preserved from shipwreck.’

Lukin was clearly a man ahead of his time, for despite his achievement, his appeals for the adoption of his craft, made to the then First Lord of the Admiralty and the Deputy Master of Trinity House fell resoundingly upon ‘deaf ears’.

Fortunately, ‘for those in peril on the sea’, Lukin was not alone in his ambitions, another independent inventor, a parish clerk from South Shields, William Wouldhave, also made a claim for the invention of the Lifeboat.

William Wouldhave, a contemporary of Lukin's, also has a claim to have invented the lifeboat.