History of Inflatable Boats and the HALKETT BOAT family story
History of Inflatable Boats and the HALKETT BOAT
According to the Guinness Book of Motorboating, the history of the inflatable goes back as far as 880 BC, when the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II ordered troops to cross a river using greased animal skins, which they inflated continuously to keep the vessels afloat. In ancient China, during the Sung and Ming dynasties, inflated, airtight skins were used for crossing rivers.
It was 1839, however, that the Duke of Wellington tested the first inflatable pontoons. In 1840, the Englishman Thomas Hancock designed inflatable craft and described this work in "The Origin and Progress of India Rubber Manufacture in England" published a few years later. In 1844, a Lieutenant HALKETT designed a round-shaped inflatable boat, which was used in several Arctic expeditions. The Frenchman Clement Ader devised a floating vessel too. Indeed, many other pioneers invented craft that foreshadowed "inflatables". In 1913, the German Albert Meyer came up with a fairly novel design. By 1920, his company, A. Meyer Bau Pneum. Boote, was marketing his "pneumatic" boats, of which nine were already in use by the German Army.
In France and Great Britain, Zodiac and RFD claim paternity of the first modern inflatable boat. In 1919, RFD's founder Reginald Foster Dagnall tested an inflatable on Lake Wisely in England, and went on to improve its design in the 1930s. This boat was the ancestor of the one-person inflatable liferaft. In France, Pierre Debroutelle came up with a prototype for an inflatable boat in 1934.
The first boat of its kind to be certified by the French Navy, Zodiac's model probably sparked the development of the civil and military inflatable boat industry. Unlike its counterparts, the boat improved by Pierre Debroutelle in 1937 was actually designed in a U-shape, with the two lateral buoyancy chambers connected by a wooden transom patented on August 10, 1943. This version was the direct predecessor of today's inflatable sports and pleasure boats. Since then many new manufacturers, new models and new designs have hit the market. Inflatable boat are no longer a little dinghy on the back of a large pleasure yacht, but can range up to 45 ft in length and longer. "Rigid" hulls of fiberglass or aluminum have evolved from the original fabric floors, luxury components and even cabins now grace the decks of many inflatable boats. Contrary to the name, inflatable boat, on some inflatable boats of today the only thing inflatable is the collar around the perimeter gunwales of the deck however; the inflatable boat lives on and becomes more popular year after year.
(Information courtesy of "A Century of Air and Water" 1896-1996, a publication printed by Zodiac International on their 100th anniversary)
The HALKETT Boat – Invented by Peter HALKETT, son of John Wedderburn Halkett
From: No Ordinary Journey, John Rae: Arctic Explorer (1813-1893)
By Ian Bunyan, Jenni Caldor, Dale Ichens, Bryce Wilson 1993
Rae’s resentment at the failure of the British Government and Admiralty to take advice regarding the adoption of native techniques on official Arctic expeditions, especially snowshoes, sledges and snow houses, continued all his life. He described the Nares expedition of 1875 as an ‘extravagantly equipped expedition that showed ludicrous stupidity and ignorance’, and never failed to castigate the Establishment on this score, writing letters to the press and publishing articles.
However, mid-nineteenth-century Britain did produce one item of technology that Rae endorsed wholeheartedly, and next to his gun, octant, chronometer and watch was one of the few items of western equipment he was to insist upon for his expeditions. This was the HALKETT India rubber cloth boat.
The cloth boat, also sometimes called an air boat, invented in 1844 by Lieutenant Peter HALKETT RN, was one of the earliest successful inflatable craft. The inventor’s father, John (Wedderburn) HALKETT, was a Director of the Hudson’s Bay Company, so perhaps it was no accident that this light, portable boat was used so often by Rae and other explorers in the Arctic. It was made of layers of cotton fabric covered with rubber, and provided with brass nozzles for inflation and padded canvas fenders filled with cork. Once inflated, the cloth boat measur6ed approximately 9 x 4 feet and could carry two men or a substantial load. Deflated, it folded up into a backpack and was easily carried.
Rae used a HALKETT cloth boat provided by Sir George Simpson on his first expedition in 1846-7. ‘We had one of HALKETT’s airboats, large enough to carry three persons. This last useful and light little vessel ought to form part of the equipment of every expedition.’ This expedition also had two wooden boats measuring twenty-two feet and seven feet six inches long respectively. From childhood, Rae had a great fondness for boats and used them on all his expeditions, sometimes designing and helping to build them himself. However, the larger wooden ones were difficult to portage between waterways, hence his enthusiasm for the HALKETT inflatable. On the 1846 expedition it was used largely for setting and examining fishing nets.
The cloth boat was also suitable for transporting the expedition and its equipment across waterways. In September 1848, when accompanying Sir John Richardson, Rae describes the crossing of Richardson River under somewhat unusual circumstances.
A fire was lit so as to soften it [the HALKETT boat] for the purpose of getting it more perfectly distended with air and I crossed over alone using two tin plates as paddles…the line that had been brought over was found to be too short for its purpose of hauling the boat backwards and forwards across the stream, but at the suggestion of Sir John, the portage or carrying straps were added. Albert, who came across next, was barely able to reach the shore, his hands having become quite powerless with cold when using the plate paddles. The real paddles had been left behind by the man of whose load they formed a part, the total weight not being more than 2 or 3 pounds! …The narrowest bits of the stream measures was about 110 yards, and the line being long enough for the purpose, the party was soon ferried over at 14 trips.
This exercise took four hours. Because of the onset of winter the waterways began to freeze over, so the HALKETT boat could no longer be used, and was left secured on a hilltop with a marker. The following July Rae was fortunate enough to find the Halkett where it had been left, and it was used again.
A beautiful HALKETT boat was most generously presented to the expedition by the special friend of all Arctic explorers, John Barrow, Esq. But unfortunately it got astray somewhere en route to Liverpool or America and I never saw it until many years afterwards, when it had become deteriorated by damp.
This HALKETT boat is probably the one which has survived intact on Orkney, the only example of this rare early inflatable known to exist. Painted on the bow are the words ‘Dr. Rae, Hudson Bay’, and on the stem ’James Fitzjames’ (Fitzjames was commander of HMS Erebus on the lost Franklin expedition). Rae gave the boat to a friend in Orkney, and it is now in the care of the Stomness Natural History Museum Trust, Stromness.
NOTE: Go to Photo section to view pictures of the Halkett Boat.
According to the Guinness Book of Motorboating, the history of the inflatable goes back as far as 880 BC, when the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II ordered troops to cross a river using greased animal skins, which they inflated continuously to keep the vessels afloat. In ancient China, during the Sung and Ming dynasties, inflated, airtight skins were used for crossing rivers.
It was 1839, however, that the Duke of Wellington tested the first inflatable pontoons. In 1840, the Englishman Thomas Hancock designed inflatable craft and described this work in "The Origin and Progress of India Rubber Manufacture in England" published a few years later. In 1844, a Lieutenant HALKETT designed a round-shaped inflatable boat, which was used in several Arctic expeditions. The Frenchman Clement Ader devised a floating vessel too. Indeed, many other pioneers invented craft that foreshadowed "inflatables". In 1913, the German Albert Meyer came up with a fairly novel design. By 1920, his company, A. Meyer Bau Pneum. Boote, was marketing his "pneumatic" boats, of which nine were already in use by the German Army.
In France and Great Britain, Zodiac and RFD claim paternity of the first modern inflatable boat. In 1919, RFD's founder Reginald Foster Dagnall tested an inflatable on Lake Wisely in England, and went on to improve its design in the 1930s. This boat was the ancestor of the one-person inflatable liferaft. In France, Pierre Debroutelle came up with a prototype for an inflatable boat in 1934.
The first boat of its kind to be certified by the French Navy, Zodiac's model probably sparked the development of the civil and military inflatable boat industry. Unlike its counterparts, the boat improved by Pierre Debroutelle in 1937 was actually designed in a U-shape, with the two lateral buoyancy chambers connected by a wooden transom patented on August 10, 1943. This version was the direct predecessor of today's inflatable sports and pleasure boats. Since then many new manufacturers, new models and new designs have hit the market. Inflatable boat are no longer a little dinghy on the back of a large pleasure yacht, but can range up to 45 ft in length and longer. "Rigid" hulls of fiberglass or aluminum have evolved from the original fabric floors, luxury components and even cabins now grace the decks of many inflatable boats. Contrary to the name, inflatable boat, on some inflatable boats of today the only thing inflatable is the collar around the perimeter gunwales of the deck however; the inflatable boat lives on and becomes more popular year after year.
(Information courtesy of "A Century of Air and Water" 1896-1996, a publication printed by Zodiac International on their 100th anniversary)
The HALKETT Boat – Invented by Peter HALKETT, son of John Wedderburn Halkett
From: No Ordinary Journey, John Rae: Arctic Explorer (1813-1893)
By Ian Bunyan, Jenni Caldor, Dale Ichens, Bryce Wilson 1993
Rae’s resentment at the failure of the British Government and Admiralty to take advice regarding the adoption of native techniques on official Arctic expeditions, especially snowshoes, sledges and snow houses, continued all his life. He described the Nares expedition of 1875 as an ‘extravagantly equipped expedition that showed ludicrous stupidity and ignorance’, and never failed to castigate the Establishment on this score, writing letters to the press and publishing articles.
However, mid-nineteenth-century Britain did produce one item of technology that Rae endorsed wholeheartedly, and next to his gun, octant, chronometer and watch was one of the few items of western equipment he was to insist upon for his expeditions. This was the HALKETT India rubber cloth boat.
The cloth boat, also sometimes called an air boat, invented in 1844 by Lieutenant Peter HALKETT RN, was one of the earliest successful inflatable craft. The inventor’s father, John (Wedderburn) HALKETT, was a Director of the Hudson’s Bay Company, so perhaps it was no accident that this light, portable boat was used so often by Rae and other explorers in the Arctic. It was made of layers of cotton fabric covered with rubber, and provided with brass nozzles for inflation and padded canvas fenders filled with cork. Once inflated, the cloth boat measur6ed approximately 9 x 4 feet and could carry two men or a substantial load. Deflated, it folded up into a backpack and was easily carried.
Rae used a HALKETT cloth boat provided by Sir George Simpson on his first expedition in 1846-7. ‘We had one of HALKETT’s airboats, large enough to carry three persons. This last useful and light little vessel ought to form part of the equipment of every expedition.’ This expedition also had two wooden boats measuring twenty-two feet and seven feet six inches long respectively. From childhood, Rae had a great fondness for boats and used them on all his expeditions, sometimes designing and helping to build them himself. However, the larger wooden ones were difficult to portage between waterways, hence his enthusiasm for the HALKETT inflatable. On the 1846 expedition it was used largely for setting and examining fishing nets.
The cloth boat was also suitable for transporting the expedition and its equipment across waterways. In September 1848, when accompanying Sir John Richardson, Rae describes the crossing of Richardson River under somewhat unusual circumstances.
A fire was lit so as to soften it [the HALKETT boat] for the purpose of getting it more perfectly distended with air and I crossed over alone using two tin plates as paddles…the line that had been brought over was found to be too short for its purpose of hauling the boat backwards and forwards across the stream, but at the suggestion of Sir John, the portage or carrying straps were added. Albert, who came across next, was barely able to reach the shore, his hands having become quite powerless with cold when using the plate paddles. The real paddles had been left behind by the man of whose load they formed a part, the total weight not being more than 2 or 3 pounds! …The narrowest bits of the stream measures was about 110 yards, and the line being long enough for the purpose, the party was soon ferried over at 14 trips.
This exercise took four hours. Because of the onset of winter the waterways began to freeze over, so the HALKETT boat could no longer be used, and was left secured on a hilltop with a marker. The following July Rae was fortunate enough to find the Halkett where it had been left, and it was used again.
A beautiful HALKETT boat was most generously presented to the expedition by the special friend of all Arctic explorers, John Barrow, Esq. But unfortunately it got astray somewhere en route to Liverpool or America and I never saw it until many years afterwards, when it had become deteriorated by damp.
This HALKETT boat is probably the one which has survived intact on Orkney, the only example of this rare early inflatable known to exist. Painted on the bow are the words ‘Dr. Rae, Hudson Bay’, and on the stem ’James Fitzjames’ (Fitzjames was commander of HMS Erebus on the lost Franklin expedition). Rae gave the boat to a friend in Orkney, and it is now in the care of the Stomness Natural History Museum Trust, Stromness.
NOTE: Go to Photo section to view pictures of the Halkett Boat.
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