life car

English

A diagram of a life-car

A life-car from 1878 is by the building

A life-car ins use, from 1855

Alternative forms

• lifecar, life-car

Noun

life car (plural life cars)

1. (historical) A watertight boat or box, travelling on a line from a wrecked vessel to the shore, used to haul people through the waves in a rescue.
   • 1911, Robert M. Ballantyne, Charles Dibdin and Alfred T. Thorson, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Life-boat and Life-saving Service:

     From this hawser the breeches-buoy or life-car is suspended and drawn between the ship and shore of the endless whip-line. The life-car can also be drawn like a boat between ship and shore without the use of a hawser. The breeches-buoy is a cork life-buoy to which is attached a pair of short canvas breeches, the whole suspended from a traveller block by suitable lanyards. It usually carries one person at a time, although two have frequently been brought ashore together. The life-car, first introduced in 1848, is a boat of corrugated iron with a convex iron cover, having a hatch in the top for the admission of passengers, which can be fastened either from within or without, and a few perforations to admit air, with raised edges to exclude water.

   • 1913, Alice B. Emerson, Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point, Chapter 9:

     This was no explanation to the girls until Tom Cameron came running back from the house and announced that the crew were going to try to reach the schooner with a line.
     "They'll try to save them with the breeches buoy," he said. "They've got a life-car here; but they never use that thing nowadays if they can help. Too many castaways have been near smothered in it, they say. If they can get a line over the wreck they'll haul the crew in, one at a time."

References

• “life”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

See also

• life raft
• lifeboat

Anagrams

• filacer