Whittaker Survival Capsule

[Stephen GarradParticipant @stephengarrad28964]

Ashley, have you built one of these??

Stephen

[Stephen GarradParticipant @stephengarrad28964]

Calling Ashley

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

No, in a word Stephen.

Not seen one before. It looks like quite a small model there, tricky.

If I were to build something like this, I would size it for at least a six inch figure, or even an action man, in order to give the thing some interest (man visible inside, possibly slightly enlarged doorway etc).

Water pump like my flying saucer or better still a bumper boat drive would suit..in fact, if you made a round bumper boat, all you would need to do is make a top for it! Acrylic spheres are available in a good variety of sizes…looking at the picture, all you would have to do is cu suitable openings in the sphere and stick it on a round bumper base! Masking off the window apertures when painting would also mean instantly glazed portholes…

Ashley

[Stephen GarradParticipant @stephengarrad28964]

One for a quiet afternoon in then.!!

Stephen

[Richard SimpsonModerator @richardsimpson88330]

I used to think totally enclosed lifeboats were a little ungainly and difficult to control, I can't imagine how horrible it would be inside one of these things. Mind you I'm just gratefull I managed to avoid free fall lifeboats in my time at sea.

When I think back to my first days at sea on the North Atlantic, when the ships were all fitted with open boats, I dread to think what the outcome would have been if we had needed to use one. I only once went down in a lifeboat for real, in the Meddy, flat calm, yet it was still a pretty frightening experience.

[Trevor HollowayParticipant @trevorholloway99134]

I remember that one, wasn't it made from a ballcock float ?

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

A ballcock float…now there’s an idea! Trouble is it’s difficult to get stuff to glue to plastics like that sometimes…and they are small.

Not enough attention paid to survival at sea in the 2nd world war. Floating in a Carley float in the Atlantic just a way of prolonging the inevitable, as would have been an open boat as you surmise Richard, although they may have had a canvas cover?. And at least they kept you out of the water.

I reckon leaving a ship in one of those drop-lifeboats would be exciting….like a drop-ship on “Aliens”….(with a better ending)

Ashley

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

I remember reading that one drawback of the free fall lifeboats is that you stop suddenly when it hits the water but your last meal doesn't!

And the link below shows a recent involuntary lifeboat drop from a modern cruise ship, apparently during crew training.

**LINK**

Colin

[Richard SimpsonModerator @richardsimpson88330]

It is still a sad fact Colin that more people have been killed by lifeboats than saved by them.

Ashley, the story was we had a medical emergency in the Meddy in the middle of the night in around the early eighties, so put out an SOS. It was answered by a Russian trawler. Strange it seemed to have an awful lot of antenna for a simple trawler, but I digress. Anyway we decided to drop our boat and go and pick up the doctor from the trawler. (A trawler with a doctor!) Anyway the volunteers were myself on the engine and the second mate on the helm, with a couple of ABs for crew. The deck department slowed the ship down and turned to port to give the boat a lee. When we got as far as the water the flat calm appearance from the main deck took on the look of a substantial swell. What we also didn't realise was that the ship still had around half a knot of way on her. The swell slapped the bottom of the boat just as the lads were getting ready to loose the falls with the result that the forward fall released but the aft fall remained tensioned and would not free. Consequently we remained held to the ship by the aft fall, as the boat rose and fell quite dramatically, and turned around because the ship was actually dragging us by the aft fall. As the lads on deck let out more wire we simply fell further aft as there was nothing we could do to get the tension off the fall. How we stayed upright I will never know. Eventually the ship stopped, we released the aft fall and we went across to pick up the doctor, suitably chaperoned by a commissar! When we got back they were very reluctant to want to get onto the pilot ladder at the crest of a swell so informed us, in very broken English, that they would come up with the boat. Getting the boat back on the falls was a nightmare with the boat bouncing up and down and the falls swinging around like pendulums.

Sadly after all that the poor lad died and we had to go through the whole thing again to take the doctor and his friend back to the trawler. Ever since then I have thought very frequently "What would it be like in the middle of the North Atlantic?" and consequently have always been convinced of the value of the expression "The ship is the best lifeboat".

[Stephen GarradParticipant @stephengarrad28964]

I nearly had a ride in a ships lifeboat, twice. Halfway across the Indian Ocean the fire alarms went off. It was an ammunition ship so we didn't hang about getting ready to leave and turned the boats out. Both times it was the fire alarm system that was on fire!!!

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