Cornish Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Cornish Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography; Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
_From a sketch by H. Trengrouse_]
At last Government ordered twenty sets of the life-preserving rockets,
but afterwards resolved on making the apparatus itself, and paid
Trengrouse the sum of £50, the supposed amount of profit he would have
made on the order. Fifty pounds was all his ungrateful country could
afford to give him. In 1821, however, the Society of Arts pronounced
favourably on his apparatus, and presented Trengrouse with their
silver medal and a grant of thirty guineas.
Through the Russian ambassador, the then Czar sent him a diamond ring,
in consideration of the great advantage his apparatus had proved in
shipwrecks on the Baltic and the Black Sea. Even this he was constrained
to pledge, that he might devote the money to his darling project.
With these acknowledgments of his services he had to rest contented;
but ever the news of lives having been saved through his invention was
a solace to an even and contented mind.
Henry Trengrouse died at Helston on February 19th, 1854.
As he lay on his death-bed with his face to the wall, he turned about,
and with one of his bright, hopeful smiles said to his son, "If you live
to be as old as I am, you will find my rocket apparatus all along our
shores." They were his last words; in a few minutes he had passed away.
The rocket apparatus is along the shores at 300 stations, but not, as
he had hoped, on board the vessels. He had despaired of obtaining
that, yet that is what he aimed at principally.
In April, 1905, owing to the loss of the _Kyber_ on the Land's End
coast, questions were asked in the House of Commons relative to
wireless telegraphy between the lighthouses and the coast. On that
occasion one of the most valuable suggestions was made by a shipping
expert, who considered that the Board of Trade should make it
compulsory that a light rocket apparatus should be carried by all
vessels, so that, when in distress, if near the coast, the crew could
send a rocket ashore. This marine engineer said: "On shore the rockets
must be fired by practised men, such as coastguards, because they have
to strike a small object; but on a vessel they have only to hit the
land, and if people are about, the line will quickly be seized and
made fast. At present, too, horses and wagons have to be used, and
sometimes it is difficult to find a road leading down to the spot from
which help must be rendered. Probably for twenty pounds an appliance
could be kept on board a vessel which would send a line ashore in less
time and with more certainty than at present. When a vessel is being
blown ashore, I have seen rockets fired from the land return like a
boomerang to the cliff on account of the strength of the gale. In my
judgment, mariners should assist in their own salvation."
On this Mr. H. Trengrouse, grandson of the inventor, wrote to the
_Cornishman_, 24th April, 1905:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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