Goodyear Donates Lifeboat from First Blimp to Smithsonian

An interesting diversion to our regular industry related news comes courtesy of Goodyear, who reports its gifting to the Smithsonian of a century-old lifeboat that saw service on the very first airship built by the company. Constructed by one S.E. Saunders of East Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1910, the boat is made primarily of wood, measures 27 feet long with a 6 foot beam and weighs over 500 pounds – that’s 8.2 metres long and 225 kilograms for those of you reading this in metric.

When Goodyear built its first airship, the Akron, in 1911, the lifeboat was brought aboard as emergency equipment. And that was a very good thing indeed, as the following year this first Goodyear blimp was the central protagonist in an unsuccessful attempt to fly across the Atlantic. The only significant item to be recovered from the watery crash site, Goodyear notes, was the British built lifeboat. The tyre maker, however, remains silent on as to whether or not the airship’s crew was able to make good use of the wooden boat following the unscheduled landing.

“The National Air and Space Museum is delighted to add this survivor of the very first Goodyear airship to its collection of historic air and spacecraft,” said Tom Crouch, senior curator of Aeronautics, National Air and Space Museum. “It will have a place of honour in a section of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center housing the Double Eagle II, the first balloon to fly the Atlantic, and the Concorde, which whisked travellers across the Atlantic at supersonic speeds.”

The boat departed Goodyear’s blimp hangar in Suffield, Ohio, for its new home in Virginia on June 9.