Background Of The Inflatable Boat

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Background Of The Inflatable Boat

You are able to see the earliest Inflatable Boats in carving done in ancient times. These early versions used animal skins and were blown up by mouth. Several people though there early drawings of inflatable boats were scuba equipment. While that would be amazing itself, they were in fact Inflatable Rafts for 1 person.

In the days of Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington in 1839, the Duke had conducted tests on the times version of the Inflatable in a Pontoon fashion. In years to follow just after the turn of the century, modern advances of the time in the rubber industry allowed the first version of an Inflatable Rubber Raft. Unfortunately, while state of art for the day, there were still many flaws in the production and the rafts developed splits in the seams due to inferior, by today's standards, in the production process.

With the 1912 loss of the RMS Titanic and then the World War I losses of war ships to torpedoes launched by submarines, inflatable boats for use as life rafts was obvious. The most prominent cause of the loss of life on the Titanic was the lack of lifeboats. There was such a shortage of life rafts that no more than 50% of the passengers could have been saved if each one had been used to its capacity.

This disaster was shortly there after created the initial SOLAS treaty to avoid such catastrophes again. The main premise of the SOLAS treaty was to ensure that there were adequate numbers of lifeboats aboard all vessels so that every person had a space on a life boat in the event of an emergency. [http://www.imo.org/Conventions/contents.asp?topic_id=257&doc_id=647]

War ships and Passenger Ships had the hardest time to comply with this policy as there were so many people aboard and deck space was not available. Many times they had to stack the Life Boats on top of one another to have the correct number of Lift Boats. Cargo ships had a lesser issue with the compliance as there was plenty of room on the ships with the low number of personnel aboard

The time span between the first and second world war allowed the Goodyear Company to develop a new style of rubber Inflatable Boat from 4 rubber cylinders and a rigid bottom to the boat. These Inflatables could be stacked vertically on deck of the warships which allowed them to accommodate the capacity. Conservative mentality of the time led to the un-acceptance of the Inflatable for the time which hampered the production.

In 1937 the design of the Inflatable Boat took a major turn. Pierre Debroutelle was the first person to develop the current U-design of the Inflatable tube. The French Navy adopted the design and gave it certification under their provisions. Then in 1943 with the inclusion of the wooden transom was patented. If you compare the Inflatable Boat of that time with today's modern Inflatable Boat.

As with many things, World War II changed the need for and thereby the industry on Inflatable Boats. Submarine attacks in the Battlefield of the Atlantic created escalated numbers of casualties among merchant ships as well as the many warships.

Now the US warships started to use rubber life rafts. And since the rubber and manufacturing processes were significantly better due to quality increases than in the prior 35 years, the Inflatable was back, bigger and better than ever before, and now it was boat-shaped.

The Inflatable Boat has now traversed the battlefield into the recreation field due to its economical and versatile nature. If you ever wanted a boat, but did not have the finances for a traditional boat, today's Inflatable Boats are a logical and safe choice.

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