Halkett boat

A **Halkett boat** is a type of lightweight  boat. The boat was first created by  (1820–1885) during the 1840s. Halkett had been interested in the problems of travelling in the Canadian Arctic. He wanted to make a boat that was light enough to be carried over bad terrain, but strong enough to be used in very bad weather conditions.

Halkett's first design was a boat that was made using cloth combined with rubber. This boat could be filled with air (inflated) to float on water or the air could be removed (deflated) so it would be smaller and lighter to carry. When deflated, the hull of the boat could be worn as a cloak. The oar used as a walking stick and the sail could be used as an umbrella. Next, he created a two-man boat that was small enough to fit into a knapsack. When it was deflated, It could be used as a waterproof blanket.

Many people who explored Canada liked his ideas but they were not very useful to most other people. He tried to show the  Royal Navy that the boats could be useful to them but did not succeed. He also could not sell them fishermen and people that hunted duck. They were commercially unsuccessful. Only two Halkett boats are still known to exist. One belonged to Orcadian explorer John Rae. The other is in the Hudson's Bay Company Museum Collection at the Manitoba Museum.

## Peter Halkett
Peter Halkett was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy in the 1840s. He was the son of John Halkett, a director of the Hudson's Bay Company who had lived in Canada for many years before returning to England. Peter Halkett was interested in the exploration of the Canadian Arctic for a long time. He was very interested in John Franklin's Coppermine Expedition of 1819–1822. This expedition had many problems.

Franklin explored the northern coast of Canada for three years. He was looking for the Northwest Passage. His search ended very badly. It was said that people killed other members of the expedition and that some even ate the other people.  11 of the 20 members of the group were killed. The people that were not killed had to eat lichen, their own boots, and the remains of dead animals left by wolves. They had become stranded on the wrong side of the Coppermine River after their boats had been destroyed in a storm. John Richardson tried to swim to safety. This caused him very bad hypothermia. One person in the party built a small canoe from canvas and willow. They had to cross the river one at a time using the canoe.

Halkett was an amateur inventor. During his spare time while in the navy, he worked on building a boat that would be small and light enough to be carried through wilderness, but strong enough to carry people in safety across wide bodies of water. The cloak had a pocket that held a paddle blade and a small bellows. The cloak weighed about . It took three to four minutes to inflate the boat. Once the boat was inflated, it could carry six to eight people.

In early 1844, Halkett tested the first boat-cloak on the River Thames. He paddled it  without taking on any water. In November 1844, Halkett wanted to test the boat-cloak in bad weather conditions. The seas of the Bay of Biscay were usually very bad, but the weather was unusually calm when he got there. The boat-cloak was very well liked 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".

Although the Navy saw no use for Halkett's boats in general naval service, this larger boat was liked very much by explorers. John Franklin bought one to take on the 1845 expedition. This expedition ended badly. All 129 men and their two ships were lost and never found. He got another boat from Halkett to be used on his last expedition.

In 1851 French explorer Joseph René Bellot led another expedition to find Franklin. This was paid for by Franklin's wife. Bellot took a Halkett boat-cloak on the journey. He said that it was "of immense value in a country where the want of wood renders it impossible to form any sort of raft".

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