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Last updated 5
December 2010 |
| Henry (Francis) Greathead #
4352
27 January 1757 - 1818 (Buried 21 November 1818) |
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Henry
built the first purpose-built lifeboat in 1789. By 1804 he had made
thirty more and did much to propagate lifeboat use.
There seems to be quite a bit of mystery and discussion
around this gentleman.
It would appear that Henry was born to John Greathead
who was the Supervisor of Salt Duties at Richmond in Yorkshire. He
spent some time in the merchant and naval services between 1777 and 1783. Far better researchers than I have spent time trying to
unravel his life, so I will not presume to know. However no
Greathead website would be complete without his mention. |
| As early as
the 1770's attempts were made to provide a means of rescue to
seafarers. A little later in 1790 a lifesaving service acquires
a rescue boat which could be described as the first lifeboat. It
was the special design of Lionel Lukin. It took a tragedy in
1789 at the mouth of the River Tyne, to realise the need for a special
means of saving life from shipwreck. A group of Newcastle
businessmen offered a prize of two guineas for the best plan or model
of a lifeboat. William Wouldhave, a local parish clerk, was
offered half the prize money and another man, Henry Greathead, was
asked to build a lifeboat using the best features of Wouldhave's
design. Appropriately called "the Original", and she was launched
in January 1790 and was in service for over 40 years saving hundreds
of lives. |
| A further
boat, built in 1802 by Greathead, and named "Zetland", was placed at
Redcar in the same year, where she had a long and honourable career.
This boat had the
builder's number of eleven was 31 feet by 10 foot 6 inches. The
fishermen of Redcar raised £200 to bring the lifeboat to the fishing
village of Redcar, as it was then. She was christened the "Zetland"
in honour of the Lord of the Manor, and remained in service until 1880,
saving over 500 lives with the loss of only one crew member. The
lifeboat was housed in what is now Granville Terrace, and was launched
from a wooden carriage pulled by horses. She was crewed by
volunteers, mainly fishermen, who were alerted by a boy beating a drum to
the rhythm "Come along brave boys, come along". It is
the only surviving boat built of this type and has been
preserved. Rescued from the breaker's yard she is now preserved at
Redcar. It can be viewed at the RNLI museum in Redcar along with
many other details of Henry's life and work. |
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|
Dr David J Greathead
was in the process of collecting much information on this gentleman.
Sadly David died before completing this task or handing me more than
his ongoing draft |
| See also my
article
which was published in "Your Family Tree" magazine February 2004
and a superb humorous
video
created by Sheila She has
kindly give me permission to add this link and she says "that Tyne Tees
TV who commissioned it and will be fine about this too." |
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