life-arrow

English

Noun

life-arrow (plural life-arrows)

1. (historical) A stick with a line attached that was fired from a musket to a ship that had foundered.
   • 1885, Chambers's New Handy Volume American Encyclopædia:

     Colonel Delvigne, of the French army, invented a life-arrow, to be fired from an ordinary musket.

   • 1897, Day Otis Kellogg, New American Supplement to the Latest Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica:

     Numerous life-arrows, kites and similar devices have been invented to carry lines to wrecked vessels, but none has proved superior to the Lyle gun.

   • 1912, Frederick Converse Beach, George Edwin Rines, The Americana:

     There was a contrivance for rendering the rope visible to the crew, and another to assist those on shore to descry the exact position of the ship in distress. The life-arrow, a cue-shaped stick of mahogany, with the thinner end projecting beyond the end of the barrel, is fired from an ordinary musket, and can carry 80 yards with a mackerel line attached.