Lifeboat (shipboard)
boat used primarily as an emergency means of leaving a larger boat or ship in case of emergency scene
A lifeboat or liferaft is a small, rigid or inflatable boat carried for emergency evacuation in the event of a disaster aboard a ship. Lifeboat drills are required by law on larger commercial ships. Rafts (liferafts) are also used. In the military, a lifeboat may double as a whaleboat, dinghy, or gig. The ship's tenders of cruise ships often double as lifeboats. Recreational sailors usually carry inflatable liferafts, though a few prefer small proactive lifeboats that are harder to sink and can be sailed to safety.
Inflatable lifeboats may be equipped with auto-inflation (carbon dioxide or nitrogen) canisters or mechanical pumps. A quick release and pressure release mechanism is fitted on ships so that the canister or pump automatically inflates the lifeboat, and the lifeboat breaks free of the sinking vessel. Commercial aircraft are also required to carry auto-inflating liferafts in case of an emergency water landing; offshore oil platforms also have liferafts.
Ship-launched lifeboats are lowered from davits on a ship's deck, and are hard to sink in normal circumstances.
The public source identifies “Lifeboat (shipboard)” as boat used primarily as an emergency means of leaving a larger boat or ship in case of emergency scene. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lifeboat, shipboard and boat.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1746393. The Library of Congress control number is sh85076815. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lifeboat (shipboard)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.