THERE WILL be fireworks this month to celebrate the 200th birthday of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). However, these fireworks will have a significance beyond that of mere show. According to RNLI heritage archive and research manager Hayley Whiting, a significant figure present at the meeting on 4 March 1824 was a Norfolk country squire with a passion for all manner of gunnery and firearms: Captain George William Manby of the Cambridgeshire Militia. For some years he had Hilgay’s Wood Hall in his care. Before his departure in 1801, it was a modest landholding. Today the estate boasts excellent sport, with undulating, part-wooded terrain.
Scientific inventions often occur at remarkably similar times in disparate places. The manner in which rocket-based maritime rescue systems evolved in the early 1800s is no different. Bright minds were considering solutions and examining materials in similar circumstances. But due credit ought to be given to the fiery imaginations of inventors themselves. Manby’s designs came at around the same time the Cornish gentleman and civil engineer HenryTrengrouse was considering how best to save lives from shipwreck.
