# Captain Dick Smith British India Shipping



## PJS (Feb 16, 2009)

Hello.
Does anyone have any facts about Captain Dick Smith known as Lifeboat Smith - he produced a training film and was known to have taught his crews to sail and to have adapted lifeboats to make them more seaworthy? Thank you very much
PJS


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## tom e kelso (May 1, 2005)

I had the pleasure of sailing with H R "Lifeboat" - Dick Smith on two occasions, first when he was C/O of DURENDA and later as C/O CHANTALA. Prior to joining BI,he had been an apprentice in P&O [Iremember sighting his superb Journals from his P&O Cadet days.] DURENDA had been relieved in 1940 of her four lifeboats when in Tilbury to help out at Dunkirk, and was later outfitted with one double-diagonal boat ex-CULEBRA and the other three reputably from RAWALPINDI (landed before her conversion to HMC). Whether this is correct, I am uncertain, as in intervening years it seems that at least one of the boats was built at Garden Reach Workshops in Calcutta. Anyway, they were all carvel built with teak planking. Dick, as he was known, had these boats fitted with a bolted-on false keel about 12" deep. The existing mast was re-stepped on the for'd thwart and a main/mizzen was stepped on the after thwart. A bowsprit (formerly wartime radio aerial topmast) was also shipped. The rig was two headsails, and two standing lugs, , that on the main/mizzen being, although free-footed stretched on a (former radio aerial topmast) boom. On occasion a staysaysail was set from the mainmast head. [ For a short time he experimented with jackyard topsails using light canvas from former wartime poplin water-catchers, but this addition to the rig proved more trouble than it it was worth]. These boats really sailed and I would suggest that many BI chaps enjoyed countless hours in East African and Indian ports. On CHANTALA, one of two BI cadetships, although similarly rigged, the steel boats did not have the sailing qualities of those in DURENDA, but then the ship had a Montague whaler and two Enterprise dinghies! Later, when in command of an N-class vessel, his enthusiasm crowned his career by winning the TREVESSA Trophy in Hong Kong Harbour

I rather think that Dick has passed on, but many BI folk will cherish memories of what was really hard sailing in the likes of Mombasa, Tanga, Zanzibar, Dar and Mtwara harbours


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