Bob, thats why i mentioned in the last thread that it was dependant on who filed the patent. It may have been "called" Murray's but that doesn't necissarily mean it was not filed by another person or maybe a company.

Tell me this... Do we have any evidence that this device was not exclusive to White Star? (this could be significant)

And sorry to be a pain but can you list all known references to this device again.

- Mervyn.

Mervyn Pritchard
Former Maintenance Officer
SS Nomadic.

I just received a summary of British patents in the classification to which boat disengaging gear belonged from 1892 through 1899. I was very hopeful that I would find the Murray's gear in this group because there were quite a few. These summaries are found in a reference known as Classified Abridgements (of British Patents) They are grouped by classification number and year and they have limited drawings for each. There were a couple of possibilities but nothing jumped out as clearly being the Murray's gear.
This brings us to a conceptual problem. We know that Murray's name isn't on this patent. How then do we declare a 100% positive identification? The initial reason we were searching for this was to identify all its details because photos only gave us partial information. We might be able to find a patent that seems to be pretty close to what we see in photos but since there are aspects we can't see in photos, how do we declare a positive identification?
At this point, the only way I can see that this can be accomplished is not through patent illustrations but through period advertisements. They are likely to identify it as Murray's gear.
Then, armed with the illustration in the ad, we may be able to find the right patent. But personally I think the patent route as the primary avenue of research focus has been played out.
Speaking of dead ends, there is another to report. I saw a photo of the inside of purportedly one of Nomadic's lifeboats and it didn't have the Murray's gear. All it had was a simple hook. That was a good idea for investigation but we can discard it now.
I haven't searched U.S. Patents so I don't know if the gear was patented under Murray's name here but I doubt it.
I don't know what the best period journals to search would be. I think Kyle and Ralph have been on this track and I wish them well.
I wish I had better news to report but maybe closing off some rabbit holes has its own value.
Good hunting.

Regards,
Bob Read

Didn't Britannic sink with some of her lifeboats in place? One would think an expedition might be able to find some intact specimens of the gear, if they knew where to look.

Since the last posts on this subject I have been pursuing a systematic investigation of British patents in search of the ever elusive Murray's disengaging gear.
In short summary, Murray's original patent of disengaging gear was made in 1866. It was not the gear we see in photos of Titanic's lifeboats.
No other patents for disengaging gear under Murray's name were ever found. So we were left with a time window of somewhere between 1866 and 1912. In 1891 Pirrie and Wilson patented a disengaging gear. It was hoped that with their connection to H&W that this might be the Murray's gear we see on Olympic and Titanic. It wasn't. However, what that did was narrow the time window. If H&W used this Pirrie and Wilson gear then in must have been an improvement on previous gear and if it was superceded then it must have been by patent gear dating later than 1891.

Since we had no idea what name the Murray's gear might be patented under, the only way to identify it would be to examine drawings of the gear. The only economical way to do that was to examine the drawings in the Classified Abridgments of British Patents. This reference gives an abbreviated description of patents with illustrations within certain classifications. The classification containing boat disengaging gear was Class 115. Over a period of over a year I examined all the patents in this class from 1892 through 1912. I just received the 1907 through 1912 group today.
The bad news is that I found no patents within that sizable time window which resembled Murray's.

I don't really have any good news other than the fact that for future research, I have eliminated a major avenue of investigation.
One idea I have begun evaluating is the possibility that the disengaging gear we see on Titanic and Olympic is just a modification of the original Murray's gear and it wasn't re-patented. If you look at the original Murray's gear (images in one of my earlier posts in this thread) you will see that the general aspects of the design of the original gear and Titanic's are very similar. The main difference is that the original had the hook incorporated as part of the lower fall block. If you take the hook and its supporting mechanism out of the block you have something which is very close to Titanic's. I'm going to do some study on the two devices and see if I can reconcile them.

Beyond that, I don't know of any other systematic avenues of investigation. Every so often I do an Google and Google Books search
to see if there are any new entries for "Murray's disengaging gear".
Period advertisements are still a possibility but I don't know of any systematic approach. There is still the matter of the "A. Luckhurst (1909)" entry. If Luckhurst had to submit drawings with his registration of the Murray's gear then that might be a possibility but in what archive that might be found is unknown to me. A search of U.S. Patents was not successful.

So there's the state of things as of today. I hope somebody comes up with some new concrete leads.

Regards,
Bob Read

This is the latest news on the search for illustrations or information on the Murray's disengaging gear.
I was looking through the Paperless Archives DVD of the Titanic disaster. In the British Inquiry section there were documents submitted to the inquiry. There was a document outlining the lifeboat particulars of Titanic. In this document it stated that the boats were equipped with Harland and Wolff's disengaging gear, the design of which was previously approved on M.9522.91. This reference number refers to a document generated by the Marine division of the Board of Trade in 1891. I had hoped that if this document from 1891 could be located then it might have an illustration of the design which was approved.
I paid a private researcher to try to find the document in question. Today I received word from her that the document in question had been destroyed according to National Archives records.
So after looking at all disengaging gear patent illustrations from 1887-1912, none matched what we see in photos of the gear in Titanic's lifeboats. All these patents were examined because the only British Patent for disengaging gear with Murray's name attached was in 1866. This disengaging gear did not match the gear seen on Olympic/Titanic.
This obscure reference to a Board of Trade document seemed to be one of the last viable search alternatives and it has turned up a dead end.

The device seen in photos of Titanic's lifeboats has a basic design similarity to the 1866 patent. The photos do not show the gear used to release the disengaging gear. That is why the illustrations were needed. "Andrews Notebook" describes the gear as "Capt. Murray's Improved Disengaging Gear". My hunch is that the original 1866 patent was "improved" but not re-patented as a new device. The only avenue available is if the Google Books archive keeps expanding and the device shows up in an article or a period advertisement. Until then I know of no avenue left for a systematic search.

Regards,
Bob Read

I have an old article somewhere on Lifeboats, and it touched on this subject. There was a name associated with some patent or other - and it wasn't Murray.

I'll have a look for it.

/Jason