Sharing Stories of Cornish Life

Housing a wide-ranging collection, Helston’s Museum of Cornish Life can be found in the town’s former market buildings. 

This year the museum was thrilled to win the public vote for ‘Object of the Year’ at the Cornwall Heritage Awards for Henry Trengrouse’s Life Saving Equipment. 

In 1807, Henry witnessed the wreck of the HMS Anson and the loss of over 100 lives at Loe Bar. He drew on his skills as a cabinet maker and designed ingenious equipment that would prevent future tragic loss of life so close to shore.

In 1825 Henry wrote about his distress at witnessing drownings from shipwrecks, “These melancholy disasters continued to exercise my mind intensely day and night, and I was led to consider what means could have been applied to save those who had so miserably perished within hail of their countrymen and friends, and within a few yards of land and safety: and thus, by such continued reflection, I very undesignedly became possessed by the idea of devising means for the preservation of life in cases of general shipwreck: from which period I have made this great object the principal of my pursuits.” 

His kit comprised a rocket, which would help form a line of communication between the ship and the shore; a ‘life spencer’, a cork buoyancy aid which has since been developed into the life jacket, and a ‘Bosun’s chair’, a seat you could sit in to be helped ashore using the communication line established by the rocket, which is an early form of the Breeches Buoy.

On his deathbed he said to his son “If you live to be as old as I am, you will find my rocket apparatus along our shores”, and he was correct that his designs became widely used and developed, saving numerous lives at sea.

The life-saving equipment by Henry Trengrouse is a most special part of the Museum collection and not just of Cornish heritage but of the world’s heritage. There is not a single corner of the globe that hasn’t benefitted from his inventions. 

MUSEUM OF CORNISH LIFE
Market Place, Helston  TR13 8TH
01326564027
www.museumofcornishlife.co.uk