Lifeboat davits

[Guest]

The three types of Davits I am familiar with are Sheath Screw, Gravity, and Quadrantal davits. Looking at my photos as well as the Fitz photos I could find, I believe that the Fitzgerald was equipped with Sheath Screw type davits. They are a similar design to those used on the AAA's including the Resereve. Lending to the fact that the Fitz was larger and newer, she had larger boats, and larger davits. While I have seen davits made by Wellin on the lakes they were of the older quadrantal style davits and the newer gravity davits. I have not seen any Wellin sheath screw, the most prevolent name of the sheath screw davits I have seen are Galbraith, while there is no real way to know unless the fit out book or detailed information on the Fitz could be located. But this likely seems to be just larger newer versions of what was on Reserve.

[Mr Link]

Yes, the Badger carries five - 60 person boats with gravity davits and one smaller boat , Lifeboat #6, that uses luffing davits. It also has inflatable life rafts.

The photos below were taken on one of the last trips last fall. Unfortunately I did not get a clean shot of the luffing davits.

The bigger boats were built by C.C. Galbraith and Son of New York, NY. I did not see an inspection tag on the smaller boat. It was likely under the cover. I didn't notice who built the davits, but I suspect it may have been the same firm. World Cat says the library at Bowling Green has a copy of one of that company's catalogs.

[DaveC]

The davits on the Titanic were designed by Welin, a Swedish firm, and similar-looking ones were evidently produced by several other companies -- whether under some licensing arrangement or not I don't know. It was a well-accepted design that was in widespread use. You can see images of them by googling 'welin davit'. The SS Badger and Spartan had similar davits as recently as the seventies, and may still.

[GL Sailor]

The type of davit in the pictures are known as a luffing davit and are the same style of davit that was used on many ships for close to 100 years including Titanic.
Even though they were made by many companies around the world the original design was patented by a company in England around the end of the 19th century.

[Guest]

Thanks for the replies.

I've been looking through tons of photos of lakers and I noticed the most of them have similar davits, unfortunately no photos were actually close enough to determine what the parts looked like.

[hayhugh2]

None of the safety equipment installed aboard the Fitzgerald would have been made by GLEW. This Coast Guard pre-approved equipment is supplied by companies who specialize in safety equipment and go through the testing that the Government require.

[Guest]

I'd imagine they're not too different than the Aurthur B. Homer's or the AAA class ship built at GLEW.

http://www.glmi.org/fitz/gallery/default.htm

[fitz301]

Does anyone know who designed the lifeboat davits on the Fitz or what company made them?

Or were they propietary to GLEW?

I just need some good reference photos to accurately model them on a 3D Fitz I'm working on.

TIA.