Volunteers at the Classic Boat Museum, Newport, with the Airbourne Lifeboat Mk1a, from left, Alan Chick, Mark Wynter, Kim Lyall, Mike Smyth, Sonia Rigaudbarrett and John Collis, who worked with Uffa Fox, who originally built the boat.
A REVOLUTIONARY Island invention is to play a part in telling the history of the world.
It is the airborne lifeboat, one of the displays at Newport’s Classic Boat Museum.
Designed by Uffa Fox during the Second World War, it was carried by a bomber and dropped by parachute, to aid aircrew who had been shot down. Large numbers of the craft saved hundreds of lives.
The lifeboat and nine other objects from Hampshire are part of the wider A History of the World project, formed out of a unique partnership between the BBC, the British Museum and 350 museums and institutions across the country.
It joins items including rosary beads from the Mary Rose, an incendiary bomb, decorated scrimshaw and the prototype Olympic torch used at the 1948 London Olympics.
Listeners and viewers of a wide range of radio and TV shows in the coming weeks will be asked to suggest further objects and can actively participate by uploading photographs of their own objects which have a local or global appeal that will make up a unique digital museum.
At the end of February, it is hoped each BBC Local website will have an additional People’s Ten Objects telling the history of their region and its global connections.
Classic Boat Museum chairman Felix Hetherington said: "We are delighted the lifeboat has been selected and recognised for the importance of its designer, Uffa Fox, the heroic saving of lives in the Second World War and the legacy of its inspiration for the development of the marine leisure craft after the war."
l The list of ten objects can be seen on the BBC Local site for Hampshire and the Island, www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire and all the objects will be on display at the relevant museums for differing periods during 2010.
Reporter: richardw@iwcpmail.co.uk