Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.21418

    Manby mortar

    Date
    1808
    Creator
    William Woolnoth (1780 - 1837, British) , Engraver
    After
    Francis Sartorius (1782 - 1812, British) , Painter
    Object type
    Library reference
    31094
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (print): 125mm
    width (print): 204mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    Maritime scene, showing, in the background, a Manby mortar firing a ball, grapnel and line to a foundering ship. The foreground scene continues the rescue narrative, with shore-based figures hauling on lines attached to a cot, travelling between the beach and the by now dismasted vessel.

    The accompanying text notes that: ‘In the back scene of the engraving is shown the act of firing a grapnel and rope…in order to form a communication with the vessel. In the fore part is represented the communication…with the method of hauling the cot to and fro from the vessel, by means of an endless rope.’

    Plate illustrating the set of correspondence: ‘Method of preserving the lives of shipwrecked Persons, and forming a Communication with Ships stranded, by means of a Rope thrown over the Vessel from a Mortar on Shore’, Transactions of the Society, instituted at London, for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce… [Transactions of the Royal Society of Arts] v.26, (1808) pp.209-229.

    Inscribed below: ‘Captn. Manby’s Method of forming a Communication with Ships stranded. Sartorius pinxt. W. Woolnoth sculp.’

    George William Manby (1765-1854) British inventor was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1831.
    Associated place
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