George William Manby

George William Manby
George William Manby, portrait by John Philip Davis
Born	28 November 1765 Denver, Norfolk, England
Died	18 November 1854(1854-11-18) (aged 88) Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
Nationality	English
Known for	Inventor of Manby Mortar and fire extinguisher

Captain George William Manby FRS (born 28 November 1765 in Denver, Norfolk; died 18 November 1854 in Great Yarmouth), was an English author and inventor. He designed an apparatus for saving life from shipwrecks and also the first modern form of fire extinguisher.

Manby went to school at Downham Market. Although he claimed to have been a friend there of Horatio Nelson, this is unlikely to be true as Nelson would have left the school (if he ever attended) before Manby started. He volunteered to fight in the American War of Independence, aged 17, but was rejected because of his youth and his small size. Instead, he entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, and then joined the Cambridgeshire Militia where he gained the rank of captain.

He married in 1793 and inherited his wife's family's estates, but left her in 1801 after being shot by her lover and moved to Clifton, Bristol. There, he published several books, including The History and Antiquities of St David's (1801), Sketches of the History and Natural Beauties of Clifton (1802), and A Guide from Clifton to the Counties of Monmouth, Glamorgan, etc. (1802). In 1803, his pamphlet An Englishman's Reflexions on the Author of the Present Disturbances, on Napoleon's plans to invade England, came to the attention of the Secretary of War, Charles Yorke, who was impressed and recommended Manby to be appointed as Barrack-Master at Great Yarmouth.

On 18 February 1807, as a helpless onlooker, he witnessed a Naval ship, the Snipe run aground 60 yards off Great Yarmouth during a storm, with (according to some accounts) a total of 214 people drowned, including French prisoners of war, women and children. Following this tragedy, Manby experimented with mortars, and so invented the Manby Mortar, later developed into the breeches buoy, that fired a thin rope from shore into the rigging of a ship in distress. A strong rope, attached to the thin one, could be pulled aboard the ship. His successful invention followed an experiment as a youth in 1783, when he shot a mortar carrying a line over Downham church. His invention was officially adopted in 1814, and a series of mortar stations were established around the coast. It was estimated that by the time of his death nearly 1000 persons had been rescued from stranded ships by means of his apparatus.