LCP(L) (Eureka boat)

The Landing Craft Personnel (Large), written LCP(L) and also called the Eureka boat, was a small wooden landing craft that carried troops from transport ships to hostile shores in the Second World War. It grew out of the shallow-draft workboat with a spoonbill bow that the Eureka Tug-Boat Company of New Orleans sold to bayou trappers, a hull whose tunnel stern let it slide over logs and run up on a beach without harming its propeller. After Marine Corps trials in 1936 favoured that hull, Andrew Higgins was contracted in September 1940 to build a slightly larger craft, and a longer boat for the British Admiralty followed. With a crew of three it carried an infantry platoon of 36 at about 8 knots. It had no bow ramp, so troops had to jump over the sides, a flaw that the ramped LCVP later corrected.