Armstrong's factory.

He afterwards became superintendent of all the hydraulic machinery of the Mersey Dock Trust at Liverpool.

After my four years had been completed, I went into the drawing-office, to which I had looked forward with pleasure; and, having before practised lineal as well as free-hand drawing, I soon succeeded in getting good and difficult designs to work out, and eventually finished drawings of the engines.

Indeed, on visiting the works many years after, one of these drawings was shown to me as a "specimen;" the person exhibiting it not knowing that it was my own work.
In the course of my occasional visits to Scarborough, my attention was drawn to the imperfect design of the lifeboats of the period; the frequent shipwrecks along the coast indicating the necessity for their improvement.

After considerable deliberation, I matured a plan for a metal lifeboat, of a cylindrico-conical or chrysalis form, to be propelled by a screw at each end, turned by sixteen men inside, seated on water-ballast tanks; sufficient room being left at the ends inside for the accommodation of ten or twelve shipwrecked persons; while a mate near the bow, and the captain near the stern in charge of the rudder, were stationed in recesses in the deck about three feet deep.
The whole apparatus was almost cylindrical, and watertight, save in the self-acting ventilators, which could only give access to the smallest portion of water.