Henry Trengrouse (18 March 1772 – 14 February 1854) was a British inventor who invented the "Rocket" lifesaving apparatus. On 24 December 1807 he witnessed the wreck of the frigate Anson in Mount's Bay, when over a hundred people died, and this disaster led him to devote his life and patrimony to the discovery of some means for saving lives at shipwrecks. He spent much labour in attempting to devise a lifeboat, but produced no satisfactory results, and turned his attention to the "Rocket" lifesaving apparatus, an early form of the Breeches buoy. In addition to this, Trengrouse was dismayed at the then common practice of burying victims of shipwrecks in common graves in unconsecrated ground near the site of the wreck, having seen the dead from the Anson buried in the dunes at Loe Bar. He persuaded his local MP, Davies Gilbert, to work for a change in the law, and from 1808 the practice was abolished. Early life Trengrouse was born in Helston, Cornwall, was the son of Nicholas Trengrouse (1739–1814) by his wife, Mary Williams (d. 1784). The family had long been the principal freeholders in Helston. Henry was educated at Helston grammar school, and resided there all his life. Samuel Drew was his intimate friend. Background As early as 1791, John Bell had devised an apparatus for throwing a line to ships from the shore; and, concurrently with Trengrouse, Captain George William Manby was engaged in perfecting an apparatus very similar to Bell's. The idea occurred to Manby in February 1807, after the grounding of HMS Snipe a mere 50 yards off shore in a storm and the subsequent loss of 67 lives, and in August he exhibited some experiments to the members of the Suffolk House Humane Society. He sought to establish communication between the shore and the shipwreck by means of a line fastened to a barbed shot which was fired from a mortar on the shore. By means of this line a hawser was drawn out from the shore to the ship, and along it was run a cradle in which the shipwrecked persons were landed. This invention had been recommended by various committees, and adopted to some extent before 1814. Trengrouse's apparatus, which was designed in 1808, was similar to Manby's in the use of the line and hawser, but instead of a mortar he suggested a rocket, and a chair was