life car
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English
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/PSM_V15_D201_Life_car_with_hawser_and_hauling_lines.jpg/220px-PSM_V15_D201_Life_car_with_hawser_and_hauling_lines.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Surfside_Lifesaving_Station_%283349522780%29.jpg/220px-Surfside_Lifesaving_Station_%283349522780%29.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Libr0791_%289679831788%29.jpg/220px-Libr0791_%289679831788%29.jpg)
Alternative forms
[edit]Noun
[edit]- (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."
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- “life”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.