Background of the Inflatable Boat

Ever wonder where the first Inflatable Boats were made? Imagine making an Inflatable Boat from animal pelts and making them air tight then blowing them up by mouth. Yes, it is true. There are ancient images on cave dwellings depicting these one man inflatable watercraftslong before the days of compressors. These depictions were sometimes mistaken for scuba diving gear when in reality, they were the origin of the Inflatable Boat.

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 todays 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.

The SOLAS Convention in its successive forms is generally regarded as the most important of all international treaties concerning the safety of merchant ships. The first version was adopted in 1914, the second in 1929, the third in 1948, and the fourth in 1960. The most prominent focus was to ensure that ships had sufficient lifeboats so that every person aboard the ship had access to a place on a lifeboat. [http://www.imo.org/Conventions/contents.asp?topic_id=257&doc_id=647#1]

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.

A man named Pierre Debroutelle designed a new version of the Inflatable Boat in 1937. This model was the premier model with the now traditional U-Shaped inflatable tube. His design was so innovative that it was the first Inflatable Boat to be certified by the French Navy. Subsequently, a wooden transom was created and then patented in 1943. On modern Inflatable Boats, you will be able to distinguish the commonalities between the 1937 model and todays model.

World War II created a prominent need for a new version of the Inflatable Life Raft with the escalation of the number of submarine attacks against the War Ships and Merchant Ships due to the number of casualties

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, todays Inflatable Boats are a logical and safe choice.

 

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Don't even think about Buying a Dinghy without checking out Wyatt Crouch's editorials on Inflatable Watercraft so you do not get Sunk buying the wrong one.