The Reverend E.L.Berthon Romsey Abbey 1877 - 

 

   The corbel known as the 'birthing corbel' is believed to be a play on the name of the Rev Berthon who designed and had the adjacent window installed. The reverend was also a local inventor, engineer and businessman.

 

    In addition to ministering to his parish, the Reverend Edward Lyon Berthon of Romsey, Hampshire, ran a boatbuilding and engineering enterprise. In 1877, he started a company in Romsey, building folding lifeboats and "other floating machines", which (originally designed as lifeboats) were the mainstay of his business.

 

     The prototype was developed by him at HMS Excellent, Whale Island, Portsmouth where he was chaplain. A seaman was drowned in an early trial in 1854 after the boat was overloaded with a 13-inch mortar.

 

    Berthon was related to the mid-twentieth century engineer, Peter Berthon, who developed the ERA racing car in the 1930s and the BRM post-war.

 

    The Berthon Boat Company is still operating today on the same site in Lymington that it moved to in 1918 and is still a boat yard with a workforce of 70 skilled craftsmen specialising in the refit and repair of yachts of up to 150 feet. It also has a 280 berth deep water marina and a yacht sales division.

 

 

Edward Lyon Berthon (February 20, 1813 London – October 27, 1899), was an English inventor and clergyman.

     He was born in Finsbury Square, London, on 20 February 1813, was the tenth child of Peter Berthon, who married in 1797 a daughter of Henry Park of Liverpool. His father was great-grandson of St. Pol le Berthon, the only son of the Huguenot Marquis de Chatellerault, who escaped the persecutions that followed the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685. He found a refuge in Lisbon, whence his son proceeded to London. Peter Berthon was an army contractor, who was reduced from wealth to comparative poverty by the wreck of a number of his ships and the end of the war on the downfall of Napoleon.[1]

 

     Berthon studied medicine in Liverpool and Dublin, but after his marriage in 1834 he gave up his intention of becoming a doctor, and travelled for about six years on the continent. Keenly interested from boyhood in mechanical science, he made experiments in the application of the screw propeller for boats. But his model, with a two-bladed propeller, was only ridiculed when it was placed before the British admiralty. Berthon therefore did not complete the patent and the idea was left for Francis Smith to bring out more successfully in 1838.

 

     In 1841 he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge,[2] in order to study for the Church. There he produced what is usually known as "Berthon's log", in which the suction produced by the water streaming past the end of a pipe projected below a ship is registered on a mercury column above. 

 

     In 1845, he was ordained, and after holding a curacy at Lymington was given a living at Fareham.[1] Here he was able to carry on experiments with his log, which was tested on the Southampton to Jersey steamboats; but the British admiralty gave him no encouragement, and it remained uncompleted. He then designed some instruments to indicate the trim and rolling of boats at sea; but the idea for which he is chiefly remembered was that of the "Berthon Folding Boat" in 1849. This invention was again adversely reported on by the admiralty. Berthon resigned his living at Fareham, and subsequently accepted the living of Romsey.[1]

 

      In 1873, encouraged by Samuel Plimsoll, he again applied himself to perfecting his collapsible boat. Success was at last achieved, and in less than a year he had received orders from the admiralty for boats to the amount of £15,000. Some were taken by Sir George Nares to the Arctic, others were sent to General Gordon at Khartoum, and others again were taken to the Zambezi by Frederick Selous. Alain Gerbault used one as his tender in his famous 1923-1929 solo circumnavigation aboard his 39' sailboat Firecrest.

     He died at the vicarage, Romsey, on 27 October 1899.[1]

 

• 1 "A Brief History of Berthon". Berthon Boat Company. Retrieved 10 January 2014.

• 2 Jump up^ "Cleric's collapsing boat resurfaces". BBC News. 12 April 2002.