page_title: Halkett boat
section_title: Boat-cloak
hierarchical_section_title: Halkett boat / Boat-cloak
caption_attribution_description: English: Diagram showing the Halkett Boat Cloak configured as a cloak and as a boat
context_page_description: A Halkett boat is a type of lightweight inflatable boat designed by Lt Peter Halkett during the 1840s. Halkett had long been interested in the difficulties of travelling in the Canadian Arctic, and the problems involved in designing boats light enough to be carried over arduous terrain, but robust enough to be used in extreme weather conditions.
  Halkett's first design was a collapsible and inflatable boat made of rubber-impregnated cloth. When deflated, the hull of the boat could be worn as a cloak, the oar used as a walking stick, and the sail as an umbrella. This was followed by a two-man craft that was small enough to fit into a knapsack, and when deflated served as a waterproof blanket.
  Although widely praised by Canadian explorers, Halkett's designs had a limited market, and he was unable to persuade the Royal Navy that they would serve any useful purpose in general naval service. Efforts to market them as platforms for fishing and duck shooting failed, and they were commercially unsuccessful. Only two Halkett boats, that of Orcadian explorer John Rae, and one held in the Hudson's Bay Company Museum Collection at the Manitoba Museum are known to survive today.
context_section_description: Halkett designed a waterproof cloak made from an early form of Macintosh cloth, cotton impregnated with India rubber by using naphtha as a solvent. The lining of the cloak contained an airtight and watertight inflatable ovoid, split into four separate airtight compartments in case of puncture, and a pocket containing a paddle blade and a small bellows. The wearer of the cloak would carry a walking stick, which would double as the shaft of the paddle, and a large umbrella to serve as a sail. The cloak weighed around 7 ¹⁄₂ pounds (3.4 kg) in total, and took three to four minutes to inflate; once inflated, it could support the weight of six to eight people.
  In early 1844, Halkett successfully tested a prototype boat-cloak on the River Thames, paddling it 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) without taking on any water, despite, in his words, being "met by—passed by—and almost run down by—various Metropolitan Steamers plying to and fro in their several vocations, and causing no little commotion in the troubled waters of the River". Buoyed by this success, he took the prototype boat-cloak with him while on naval service, using it whenever the opportunity arose to test it under various sea conditions. In November 1844, Halkett hoped to test the boat-cloak in bad weather conditions, in the rough seas of the Bay of Biscay, but the weather was unusually calm. He was forced to take down his umbrella, and paddle, recalling later that "the winds that day were too civil by half, and the sleepless bay almost quite dormant". The boat-cloak was positively received by explorers; John Richardson (who had almost died during the 1819–1822 Coppermine expedition) wrote that "Had we been possessed of such a contrivance in our first expedition, I have little doubt of our having brought the whole party in safely".
caption: The Halkett boat-cloak furled as a cloak, and unfurled as an inflatable boat
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