Joseph Francis was born on March 12, 1801 in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Thomas and Margaret Francis. Until he was eleven years old Francis enjoyed the normal boy’s life, but in 1812 his father died and to help support his widowed mother and six other children Francis became a page in the Massachusetts state Senate, remaining there four years.
From 1816 to 1819, through the kindness of a near relative who was engaged in the boat-building business, Francis was given a corner of the plant for his experiments and succeeded in building there a fast rowboat with this unsinkable feature in it.
He exhibited it at the Mechanics Institute Fair in Boston that year and received “honorable recognition. ” Hoping to find a market in New York, Francis went there in 1820 but for years was unsuccessful either in obtaining orders for lifeboats or in finding any one to stake him in his experimental work.
At last, around 1837, he produced a wooden boat which withstood the severest tests ship-owners could devise, and Francis’s name was made. Almost immediately orders for boats were received from many European countries and from within the United States.
After patenting the idea in 1838 and contracting with the Novelty Iron Works of New York to manufacture the boats, Francis turned to further experimenting.
As early as 1838 Francis had in mind the invention of a boat adaptable for saving life on wrecked vessels, and about 1840 had constructed a decked-over boat of wood to run back and forth on a hawser between ship and shore.
Actual tests, however, indicated that wood was not strong enough to withstand the force of heavy seas and Francis thereupon turned to metal. He found that flat iron plates likewise were unsuitable, but became convinced that these same plates when corrugated would possess ample strength for his purpose. He was then faced with the additional difficulties not only of manufacturing corrugated metal but of shaping the corrugated sheet to the irregular curves of a boat.
After four years of tedious, discouraging, and costly work, he solved the problem through the use of cast-iron dies which he himself designed, and was granted a patent March 25, 1845, for the use of corrugated metal in the construction of all boats and vessels.
While he was engaged in this work, the International Shipwreck Society for All Nations, under the direct patronage of the King of France, made him a “benefactor, ” and in 1843 both the French and English sections of the society requested him to form an American section. The result was that through his efforts the American Shipwreck and Humane Society was organized out of which grew the United States Life-saving Service. Two years after Francis had obtained the patent on his corrugated metal boat, the Novelty Iron Works built what was considered a perfect life-boat. Three years passed, however, before an opportunity came to test it. The boat had been placed at one of the life-saving stations on the New Jersey coast and in January 1850 the British ship Ayrshire, with two hundred passengers aboard, was wrecked off Squan Beach.
Through the use of Francis’s life-boat all but one of the passengers were rescued. Between 1850 and 1855 Francis worked constantly on the application of his corrugated metal patent to a variety of devices including water-tight army wagons for river crossings. Models of these reached various parts of Europe, resulting in orders from Italy, Russia, Brazil, Germany, and England, as well as from the military service of the United States.
In 1855 Francis went abroad and remained there approximately eight years. In France, Austria, and Russia he gave exhibits of his life-saving apparatus and military boat-wagons and granted concessions for the manufacture of his inventions in England and Germany.
Upon his return to the United States in 1863, he continued his researches, extending the application of his corrugated metal patent to floating docks and harbor buoys.
He wrote and published in 1885 A History of Life-Saving Appliances.
He was buried in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
One of his greatest accomplishments was the construction of a fleet of light-draft corrugated iron steamers for the Russian government, which unassembled were transported over the Ural Mountains to the Aral Sea in Asia. During the years of his productive work he invented and built many kinds of boats: portable, screw boats, molded boats, “hydrogiene” life-boats, launches, cargo boats, and double or reversed-bottom boats. Within fifteen years practically every craft sailing out of New York harbor swung Francis life-boats from its davits. Francis established a manufactory for corrugated iron steamers in Russia. His first successful corrugated iron life-boat made in accordance with his patented process is still preserved in the National Museum at Washington. He invented among other things a metallic cloth hood for sentinels in a storm, a circular yacht, and a table joist car-lock. Another Francis's notable achievement was in founding of the United States Life Saving Service and American Ship Wreck Society. In 1890 the United States Congress conveyed a gold medal, the largest medal ever granted by Congress, to Joseph Francis, an eighty-nine year old hero. Through his work with lifeboats, Francis had saved hundreds of lives around the world.
Joseph Francis's particular interest, had always been in boats, especially unsinkable ones, and he is said to have built one with cork in its ends when only eleven years old, which with four men aboard could not be sunk.
He was a member of the founder of United States Life Saving Service and American Ship Wreck Society.
Joseph Francis's wife was Ellen Creamer of Salem, Massachusetts, and at the time of his death at Cooperstown, New York, he was survived by an only son.
