The new life-ship Peronelle, 1873. ...more than ordinary interest attached to the [launch], as the Peronelle is the first vessel of her class ever yet constructed and solely designed for the humane purpose of affording ready and efficient aid in cases of disaster at sea, and to rescue lives from wrecks. It cannot, of course, be anticipated that much service can be rendered in this way by any craft, however skilfully designed and strongly-constucted, unless provided with steam-power. This advantage the Peronelle does not yet possess; but her designer, Captain Hans Busk, feels confident that as soon as the undertaking upon which he has long been engaged is more generally known, there will be no hesitation on the part of the British public to provide not only the requisite funds to supply the schooner with engines and screw, but also to enable Captain Busk to equip and endow suitably half a dozen - or, may we not say, half a score - of these noble life-ships, each commissioned to cruise off those portions of our seaboard where wrecks are known to recur with fatal precision during each successive gale. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.