FOOTNOTES:

[267] This term had its origin in the early part of the present century, when so many of H.M.’s 10-gun brigs, employed in carrying the mails, or on other short services, were lost, especially on their Atlantic voyages, that they got the name of “coffins.”

[268] See [Appendix, No. 13, p. 634], where a list will be found of the different Acts of Parliament which have been passed relating to merchant shipping since 1849.

[269] See ‘History of Lloyd’s Register of British and Foreign Shipping,’ [Appendix, No. 12], p. 624.

[270] See ante, vol. iii. pp. 48 and 50.

[271] See Parl. Paper C. 630, 1872.

[272]

Wrecks, &c., other than Collisions in the United Kingdom.
Year.Total Loss.Partial Damage.Total.
1856368469837
1857384482866
1858354515869
18595275401,067
18604766051,081
18615136581,171
18624556951,150
18635038301,333
18643866531,039
18654708321,302
18665628761,438
18676561,0201,676
18685278411,368
18696061,0471,653
18704117301,141
18713988261,224
18724391,1101,549
1873
Jan. to June		212522734
Total8,24713,25121,498

Annual average of 17 years, 472-11/17 total wrecks, and 748-13/17 casualties resulting in partial damage.

Note.—In the above statistical statement no earlier date than 1856 is taken, as the machinery had not in 1855 being sufficiently organised to ensure that nearly all the wrecks, &c., in that year were reported; and there is reason to believe that some may not have been reported in the years 1856, 7, and 8.

[273]

Return of lives lost and saved between 1855 and 1873.

The following table shows the number of lives saved, and the number of lives lost on and near the coasts of the United Kingdom, 1855-1873.

Year.Lives Saved.Lives Lost.[274]
By Life Boats. By Rocket, and Mortar Apparatus, Lines, &c.By Luggers, and Coastguard and other Boats.By Ships and Steam Boats.By Ships’ own Boats.By Individual Exertion. By other means.Total Lives Saved.
1855-63364991351489..22..2,697485
1856-7634383606587..21..2,231521
1857-8120149683244..17..1,213539
1858-9220154878622..16..1,890353
1859-60367407681769951[275]9..3,1841,647
1860-17714154678581,49914362[275]4,386537
1861-23224153719191,425273963,875884
1862-32912524141,3191,28995314,105690
1863-44722564241,5331,465104394,599620
1864-52933473381,0031,459222323,694516
1865-64804904621,0002,19573745,008698
1866-73785273859862,728137655,782896
1867-83773108431,0601,90266605,1581,333
1868-95043333177192,062..5614,496824
1869-705323543837142,06784434,501933
1870-14732035001,0622,79524595,495774
1871-24032932659901,737..2453,933626
1872-35487155826471,88863884,774590
Total75216502995015,52225,462209585571,02113,466

[274] The figures in this column show the number of lives lost between the 1st January and 31st of December in each year. The number of lives lost during the first six months of 1873 is 728.

[275] No record kept for former years.

[276] We expended between 1555 and 1873 143,660l. (see ‘Wreck Returns, 1874,’ p. 11) in providing apparatus for saving life, and in rewards to individuals as well as awards of the National Lifeboat Institution (apart altogether from the efforts of that noble Society, about which see ante, note, [p. 315]), and Her Majesty was graciously pleased (12th April, 1867) to issue her warrant instituting two decorations, the “Albert Medal of the first class,” and the “Albert Medal of the second class,” to reward brave men, who have been conspicuous for saving life at sea or on the coast.

[277] The total number of vessels and their tonnage, including their repeated voyages, that entered and cleared at the ports in the United Kingdom with cargoes and in ballast from and to foreign countries and British possessions for the year 1873 was 130,075, of 44,439,986 tons; the entrances and clearance coastwise with cargoes only, 332,148 vessels, of 40,632,014 tons. If I add to these the coasters in ballast and those with the description of cargo of which no note is taken at the Customs, as also the vessels frequenting the Channel, and bound for Hamburg, Bremen, and the Northern ports of Europe, which do not enter any of the ports of the United Kingdom, of which no return is kept, it will be found that I have not over-estimated the number which now annually pass along or frequent our coasts.—‘Navigation and Shipping of the United Kingdom for the Year 1873.’ Presented to Parliament, 1874.

[278] This point involves many grave questions. Happily, men do not altogether live for the purpose of making money—they have other and far nobler objects in view. Some, indeed, but they are rare and grand characters, live altogether for the benefit of mankind and the progress of the human race. There are others who follow a business or profession, not altogether because it yields them profit, but because it affords them pleasure. Such is the case to a large extent in this country. We are a seafaring people, and we pursue occupations in connexion with it frequently as much for pleasure as for profit. We enjoy the business of Shipowners, because it is natural to us, and we take a delight in improving the forms of our ships. I have seen a captain whose heart was in his ship, caress her!—yes, caress her, by clapping the taffrail where he stood when she was performing her work to his satisfaction, as if she had been a living thing, and heard him exclaiming, “Go a-head, my beauty!” just as many persons may have been heard extolling the performance of a favourite horse. Care must, therefore, be taken not to interfere by unnecessary legislative enactments with what is not merely our business but our pride and pleasure, or we may be driven, to the serious loss of the nation, to seek other investments for our capital. We have now arrived at that point where competition has become so close that if we tax our Shipowners to any greater extent than they are now taxed, directly or indirectly (interference with their affairs is the heaviest as well as the most obnoxious of all taxes), we shall most assuredly drive their ships from the trades in which they are now engaged, or compel them to submit to the humiliation of seeking a Foreign register, and hoisting a Foreign flag.

[279] See ante, [p. 465].

[280] The year previous to 1873-4 was a much more disastrous one than the year before it, as there were 728 lives lost in the six months ending 30th June, 1873, which is in some measure accounted for by the wreck of the ship Northfleet, when 293 lives were lost.

[281] See Parl. Paper, 214, 1875, pp. 4 and 11.

[282] As it has often been broadly stated that employment in British ships is much more dangerous now than it was in 1836, when the first Committee sat to inquire into the cause of shipwrecks, I may reply that the most careful analysis shows that, while the losses were then on the average of the three previous years 3·72 percentage of the number of vessels (or rather of their tonnage) employed, they were for the three years previous to 1873 only 2·95 per cent., although these years were exceptionally fatal to ships laden with timber, grain, and coal (see Appendix to ‘Commission on Unseaworthy Ships,’ pp. 780 and 791), arising from the enormous increase in the oversea trade of these articles. For instance, while in 1861, 57,745,993 cwts. of corn were imported, the imports in 1872 amounted to 97,765,298 cwts. The imports of timber rose between the same periods from 3,358,589 to 4,949,786 loads; and the oversea exports of coals from 7,934,832 in 1861 to 13,198,494 tons in 1872.

[283] Lighthouses, 6 & 7 Wm. IV. cap. 79.

[284] Merchant Shipping Act Amendment Act, 16 & 17 Vict. cap. 131.

[285] Merchant Shipping Act, 36 & 37 Vict. cap. 85.

[286] Parl. Paper, C. 1152, 1875.

[287] However beneficial in its results, it may well be questioned if any body of surveyors ought to be empowered at their pleasure, without complaint, to thus retard trade and stop the ordinary course of commerce; and I am disposed to question alike the policy and the wisdom, as well as the necessity, of this regulation. There appear to be now employed in these questionable operations, no less than 117 Government surveyors, “shipwrights,” and “engineers,” stationed at different ports in the United Kingdom, twelve of whom are retired officers of the Royal Navy, besides a good many so-called “shipwrights,” who can have very little knowledge of the construction of merchant ships or of their requirements.[288] In making these appointments, the fact seems to have been overlooked that, at all our ports, there are the surveyors of Lloyd’s Register, or of other similar associations, whose services might have been utilised with a great saving of public expenditure, and with, perhaps, greater efficiency. Yet I read, to my astonishment, in the public journals not long since a letter (6th August, 1875) from Mr. Plimsoll, addressed to the President of the Board of Trade, in which, among much irrelevant matter, he urgently recommends eighteen more surveyors to be appointed by Government, at a salary of not less than 1000l. per annum. I sincerely trust no such appointments will be made; but that Government will direct its attention to other more economical and more efficient modes of removing the evils of which Mr. Plimsoll complains, if indeed they exist at all to the extent alleged. There is no use hiding the fact that all such appointments must be filled, in a great measure, through patronage, and that it would be impossible to find men, even at the tempting salary named, competent for the numerous technical and responsible duties that would be required of them. But if such men could be found, are we to hand over the whole of the vast maritime interests of this country, from the time the keel is laid to the despatch of the ship to sea, to the supervision and control of a certain number of Government officials, however competent? As it is, the duties of the surveyors, already appointed, are too frequently as ludicrous as they are questionable. I daresay Mr. Plimsoll must have felt this when he recommended in his letter to Sir Charles Adderley, that “we ought not to have less than four detaining officers in Ireland, four in Scotland, and ten in England, and that the minimum average(?) salary should be 1000l. per annum.” Of course he meant them to look after the officers already appointed as well as after the ships; and that they should be “apart altogether from the Permanent Secretary, and the Secretary of the Marine Department,” whom he charges, in the same letter, without, by the way, one tittle or shadow of evidence, with the grossest dereliction of duty.

[288] The staff of the Board of Trade, and its cost for salaries, in 1875 were as follows:—

Employment.Number.Aggregate Salary.
£
In the Board of Trade and registry of seamen23748,760
Examinations133,355
Mercantile marine offices23724,416
Surveyors, emigration officers, tonnage measurers, recorders of draught of water15430,078
Nautical assessors..3,000
Total641109,609

[289] I feel no hesitation in giving, from the public journals, an account of this most extraordinary and unusual scene, not merely as an episode in the history of Merchant Shipping, but to explain the circumstances under which the temporary Act now in force was passed at the close of the Session of 1875:—

“Mr. Charley asked the First Lord of the Treasury whether he could hold out any hopes of being able to afford facilities for the third reading of the Infanticide Bill in time to enable the House of Lords to consider it this Session.

“Mr. Disraeli said he thought he could hold out some hopes to the hon. member. He felt some difficulty on Monday in stating the intentions of the Government, but this arose from their desire to pass the Merchant Shipping Bill this Session; but, finding it impossible to get through the committee on the Agricultural Holdings Bill this week, they had come to the conclusion to abandon the Merchant Shipping Bill. It had been submitted to the Government that they might pass the Bill in a modified form, but he declined to deal with the subject in that fragmentary manner. All he could say was that they would take the earliest opportunity of bringing forward the measure next Session.

“Mr. Goschen, speaking on behalf of the shipping interest, expressed his extreme regret that the Merchant Shipping Bill had been sacrificed for the Agricultural Holdings Bill.

“Mr. Plimsoll earnestly entreated the Government not to consign thousands of their fellow-creatures to an undeserved grave. There were, he said, shipowners of murderous tendencies—(‘Order, order!’)—who had frustrated the passing of the Bill by protracted debates. The secretary of Lloyd’s had assured a friend of his that he did not know of a single ship which had been broken up during the past thirty years because it was worn out. The result was that hundreds of brave fellows were sent to unhallowed graves by these speculative scoundrels—(cries of ‘Order!’ and uproar).

“The Speaker informed the hon. member that his remarks were out of order. When the Merchant Shipping Bill, which was on the orders of the day, came up for consideration he would have an opportunity of addressing the House.

“Mr. Plimsoll said he would give notice that on Tuesday next he would put a question to the President of the Board of Trade with reference to certain vessels which had been lost, entailing a great sacrifice of human life, and would ask whether those vessels were not owned by Mr. Edward Bates, the member for Plymouth, or a person bearing the same name. He should also have some questions to put, with respect to members on the Liberal side of the House, for he was determined to unmask the villains who sent these people to their death—(cries of ‘Order!’ and tremendous uproar).

“The Speaker said: The hon. member has used the term ‘villains.’ I trust that he did not apply it to any members of this House.

“Mr. Plimsoll: I did, sir, and I shall not withdraw it.

“The Speaker: The conduct of the hon. member is altogether unparliamentary, and I call on him to withdraw the language—(cheers).

“Mr. Plimsoll (excitedly): And I must again decline to withdraw it.

“In reply to a third interrogation by the Speaker, the hon. member again declined to withdraw. The Speaker: The hon. member declines to withdraw, and I must submit his conduct to the judgment of the House.

“Mr. Plimsoll, standing in the centre of the House, said he would submit to the judgment of the House. Once more approaching the table, holding a paper in his hand, said, ‘This, sir, is my protest,’ and was proceeding to address the House, but in obedience to loud cries of ‘Order!’ he took his seat on the front bench below the gallery.

“Mr. Disraeli rose and said that the conduct of the hon. member was almost unparalleled.

“Mr. Plimsoll, jumping up and interrupting: ‘And so is that of the Government’—(tremendous uproar).

“Mr. Disraeli, continuing, said: I feel that it is my duty, as far as I can, to uphold the dignity and honour of the House; for the conduct of the hon. member has been not only violent, but so offensive, that it is impossible for the House to pass it over. As the hon. member has declined to withdraw the word used, it is my duty to move that he be reprimanded by the Speaker for his disorderly and violent conduct—(loud cheers).

“The Speaker said that according to the practice of the House the hon. member for Derby would answer in his place, and then withdraw.

“Mr. Plimsoll retired to the bar, and as he reached it, turned round apparently with the intention of saying something, but the members there prevailed on him to pass out, and as he did so, he exclaimed: ‘You do not know the men as well as I do. This will cost the lives of thousands.’ The hon. member then left the House.

“The Marquis of Hartington rose and was about to address the House, but was informed by the Speaker that the motion before the House was, that the hon. member for Derby be reprimanded.

“The Marquis of Hartington said he need hardly state that he should support the motion—(cheers). It was evident that the hon. member was labouring under great excitement, but he was not justified in using the language he had employed. No doubt, when he had a little time for reflection, he would see his conduct in a different light—(cheers).

“Mr. Sullivan said the scene they had witnessed was without precedent in the House, but he appealed to the House to be indulgent to the hon. member. He was aware that the hon. member was extremely ill, and his state of mental excitement arose from his overstrained feelings. Without seeking to justify the transgression of the hon. member, he wished the House would allow him to have a week’s rest, by which time he would be in a position to apologise for his misconduct. He (Mr. Sullivan) held in his hands the documents which had wrought the hon. member up to his present state of excitement, and for some time past his friends had been caused the most serious uneasiness by the deplorable state of his mind. If the House would afford him a few days’ rest, he would no doubt be able to set himself right—(cheers).

“Mr. Disraeli then moved that the hon. member for Derby be requested to attend in his place on this day week—(loud cheers).

“Mr. Fawcett said that Mr. Plimsoll was at present in an extremely painful state of excitement. He had gone out to him in the lobby, and found him in the most lamentable condition. By great effort he had persuaded him to take a walk in the open air—(great laughter). At the end of a week there was little doubt that he would withdraw the violent expressions he had used—(cheers).

“Mr. Bass, as the colleague of Mr. Plimsoll, offered his grateful acknowledgments to the House for the course they had taken—(cheers).

“The matter then dropped.

“On the motion for discharging the Merchant Shipping Bill,

“Mr. Bates said that he wished, with the indulgence of the House, to make a statement with respect to what had fallen from the hon. member for Derby earlier in the sitting. All who had witnessed the extraordinary exhibition would agree with him that the hon. member for Derby was not responsible for his actions. With respect to himself it was unfortunately true that he had lost during the last two years five ships; but ships better found in every respect were never sent to sea. They were all of them iron ships, and classed A 1. To himself, personally, pecuniarily the loss was very severe, as he never insured his ships for more than one-half or two-thirds of their market value. That was not so much the matter; but he did deplore the loss of his men, and his only consolation was that, as far as human foresight could go, the ships were as good and as safe as man could make them. He felt assured that the statement of the hon. member for Derby would be looked upon by all, as he looked upon it, with pity—(cheers).

“The House shortly afterwards adjourned.”

Mr. Plimsoll subsequently apologised for his conduct to the House. But it is much to be regretted, on his own account, that he neither attempted to substantiate the charges he had brought against Mr. Bates, nor asked leave to withdraw them.

[290] When the Bill was withdrawn there stood upon the orders of the day of the House of Commons no less than 178 amendments to it, many of them on subjects of great importance and difficulty, as well as of great intricacy. See Times’ report of Mr. Disraeli’s speech at the Mansion House, 4th August, 1875.

[291] ‘Unseaworthy Ships,’ 38 & 39 Vict. cap. 88.

[292] Already there seems to be a misapprehension. Mr. Plimsoll, as would appear by the newspapers, has been spending his vacation on the shores of the Black Sea and Danube, visiting the grain ports, and instructing the masters of all vessels loading grain how to stow it in accordance with the conditions of the new Act. That he is clearly of opinion that inspectors should be appointed is evident from the fact that he appointed forty of them! and that the Foreign Office approves of what he has done! What next and next? But the Board of Trade, by the correspondence which has been published, is of an entirely different opinion, and maintains that the Act of Parliament gives no such power. Nor does it! Nor should it! It is not the duty of Government to appoint inspectors to see that its laws are carried into effect. I say nothing as to the expense and impracticability of having surveyors at every port in the world where a ship is to load grain; but, if such is the meaning of the Act as applicable to grain ships, where is this sort of legislation to end? Are we to have Government inspectors to see to the loading of all our ships at home and abroad? And if so, why should this new system not be applied to every branch of commerce? Nay, why should it not extend into our houses? Surely heavy penalties would, in the case of grain ships, be a much more effectual mode of enforcing the conditions of the Act. Is there to be no end to the folly of unauthorised individuals appointing surveyors to inspect the loading of our ships abroad, or interfering with duties alone within the power of the Executive Government? It is high time we put a stop to these well-meaning, but Quixotic, proceedings.

[293] I cannot understand what is meant by the word “keep.” A ship sails in a seaworthy condition, but an accident happens on the voyage which may render her “unseaworthy”: is the master, under such circumstances, to put back to the nearest port for repairs? and if he does not do so, and his ship is lost, it may be from causes wholly different, is his policy of insurance to be invalid, and is he to be responsible for any loss of life that may thus occur?

[294] In Mr. Plimsoll’s protest, which, as the rules of the House of Commons would not allow him to present, he either threw upon the table, or had dropped into the House from one of the galleries,[295] he says, “I charge the Government that they are wittingly and unwittingly, for they are both, playing into the hands of the maritime murderers inside the House and outside the House to secure a further continuance of the present murderous system.”... “I desire to unmask the villains who sit in the House, fit representatives of the more numerous, but not greater, villains who are outside the House.” I offer no comment on this language. It tells its own tale of the state of mind of its author.

[295] The disgraceful scenes in the House of Commons could not have arisen from Mr. Plimsoll’s momentary excitement, when the Government announced the withdrawal of its Bill, but must have been premeditated, as this carefully prepared protest too clearly shows.

[296] Mr. John W. A. Harper, Secretary to the Salvage Association. See Question 8769, p. 311.

[297] See also evidence, W. J. Lamport, Question 5556, p. 192. With regard to the question of overloading, Mr. Lamport made a remarkable statement, which I do not hesitate to give at length, because it differs entirely from an opinion prevailing at present in the public mind.

The Chairman asked (Question 556): “From your knowledge of the shipping in Liverpool during forty years, Do you think that there has been a great deal of overloading?”—“Since it was intimated to me that I was to be asked to give evidence in this room, I have been trying to task my memory for cases in which when vessels had foundered or had not been heard of, I myself had felt a reasonable suspicion that the cause was overloading. I have not been able to bring to my recollection a single instance of the kind. Now this result, I must confess, was a little startling to myself, and in order to check it I spoke to the overlooker of my firm, who is a man older than myself, who has had longer experience than I have had, and who, from his outdoor business, would probably hear of such things more frequently than I should. The overlooker told me that he himself did not remember a single instance, in which he had suspected that any vessel which had left the port of Liverpool had been lost because of being overloaded.”

I may add, from my intimate knowledge of Mr. Lamport, which extended over a period of thirty years up to his untimely death, that these were no mere words of course. Indeed, the statement agrees with my own experience; and, from the inquiries I have made elsewhere, there are comparatively very few ships lost from overloading, except in the coasting and short-voyage trades. In confirmation of this opinion, the Commissioners, in their final report, state that “It is chiefly among the small coasting vessels that any habitual overloading prevails,” and “that there are a large number of ships in ballast annually lost, while the losses from collisions show that the management and negligence of sailors are not less disastrous than the carelessness of shipowners.”

[298] It appears to me to be a grave mistake to require the insertion in the ship’s articles of the draught of water. These articles are an agreement between owner, master, and crew, and are binding on all. How can a drowned sailor’s family claim compensation for a vessel being loaded to a draught the sailor himself agreed to?

[299] Mr. Gray, the Assistant-Secretary to the Board of Trade, stated (Question 10,088) that the Board had received a letter from Mr. Plimsoll, suggesting that the Department should employ the staff of ‘Lloyd’s Register’ to assist in the survey of certain merchant ships.

[300]

Opinion of Mr. Charles McIver.

In going carefully through the evidence taken before the Royal Commission on Unseaworthy Ships, I cannot find that any witness objects to the principle that no ship should be allowed to proceed to sea that is unseaworthy, nor do I find that any Shipowner would object to a survey of his ship for the purpose of ascertaining her seaworthiness. Indeed, Mr. Charles McIver, of Liverpool, the senior partner of the Cunard Company, and a gentleman of great experience, though he does not class any of his ships for somewhat the same reason as I have stated, considers it advisable that all ships should be classed—not merely certified as seaworthy, but classed. The Chairman (Question 9245, p. 331) remarked: “You said you would not have any objection to have your vessels classed;” and then he asked, “Do you think it advisable that all ships should be classed?—I think so, from what I have seen in the last two or three years. If you will allow me, I will give another reason. I once got nearly cast away in an unclassed vessel about forty years ago. I was going to the States. She was a wooden vessel. I had taken a passage in her along with my sister, because I knew the captain of the ship. She was loaded with steam-engines and coals. I shall not mention the ports or the owners, because they are all dead and gone, the captain included. Off the Azores we fell in with a gale of wind. It only lasted for twelve hours; but, if it had lasted for twenty-four hours, she would have gone down. The captain came to me, and said, ‘If I had known that she was as bad as this, I would not have let you come.’ He said, ‘Her beams are away from the sides.’ I said, ‘I know that she is making water very rapidly, because it is coming out as clear as it went in,’ and they were pumping every two hours, and so forth. Now, I do not mean to say that there may not be culpability in the owner, but, sometimes, it is ignorance. So it was in that case; they did not believe that the ship was as bad as she was. My remark to the captain was, ‘When you go home you had better throw up command of this vessel or you will lose your life.’ He did so; but, in some way or other, he mixed up Mr. McIver’s name with it. The owner said, ‘Mr. McIver is frightened.’ The captain said, ‘No, he is not frightened, but he knows too much.’ He said, ‘I will give up the ship.’ Now, to show you that I did not think that there was any intentional culpability on the part of the owner, but simply ignorance, or simply that they could do what I could not do, because I knew too much, they gave that ship to the mate, and sent that vessel away in his charge for a long voyage abroad, and she did it safely. The next voyage she was never heard of. Now, any sort of classing, I think, would have prevented that ship from going to sea.”

[301] [Appendix No. 12], p. 624.

[302] The writer of a letter which appeared in the ‘Nautical Magazine,’ headed “‘Lloyd’s Register’ and the Great Steam Lines,” and which was afterwards published separately (Pewtress & Co. London. 1872), says, “It is very remarkable that the classing of large steamers with Lloyd’s was nearly wholly omitted until 1870;” arising, I may add, from the fact that the ‘Liverpool Register’ allowed, in such ships, scantlings and arrangements of which Lloyd’s surveyors disapproved. “But,” continues the same writer a little further on, “it is much more remarkable that February 1870 is the date of Lloyd’s new rules, which are, it is supposed, an abandonment of the principle and scantlings of the old rules.” We have here exemplified in the most forcible manner the evils of competing classification associations.

[303] Safety depends much more on the nature of the cargo, and the manner in which it is stowed, than most people, or even some shipowners, suppose. Dead weight, when stowed close and very low, while it makes a vessel stiff—that is, “stand up” to a heavy pressure of canvas, makes her roll in a calm when there is a heavy swell (like the pendulum of a clock), to the injury of her spars and rigging, and, not unfrequently, to roll her masts overboard. Railway and other bar iron, which is now a very common description of cargo, should always be stowed in a triangular form, and the heavier the bars the wider should be the angles. Ores of every description, on an oversea voyage, should be stowed in a boxed hold, or on platforms in the centre of the ship, thoroughly blocked from the sides. In a word, the proper stowage of a ship, whether as regards her form or the nature of her cargo, is a science which has not been sufficiently studied.

[304] We must ever remember that although, since we relieved our Shipowners of all the restrictions to which they were subjected by the Navigation Laws, they have advanced above all other nations, the shipping of many of those nations are now running them a very close race. If we burden them with load-lines, which prevent them from carrying as much cargo with safety as a foreign vessel would be allowed to do—half a foot, or even three inches less depth may deprive them of all their profit—or saddle them with charges for surveys and so forth, already very heavy, and to which their competitors are not subjected, we, in either case, drive them from the trade. We must further, if we adopt the principle of a certificate of seaworthiness, recollect the interests of a great number of small coasters, and carefully consider if it would not seriously affect them.

[305] See ‘Final Report of Royal Commissioners on Unseaworthy Ships,’ p. 15.

[306] The following graphic description of the state of too many of our ordinary merchant vessels when they sail is so true that I do not hesitate to transfer it to these pages. I do so with the hope that the Legislature may direct its earliest attention to the improvement of the lamentable state of things here described, and with the conviction that the first step towards that improvement would be the abolition of the system of advances to seamen: “The ship is about to leave the dock, when the crew, generally of a very inferior description, are brought on board, and, frequently, in such a state of intoxication that they are worse than useless during that day, and the ship must anchor for the night. Next day the motley crew commence work reluctantly, in a thoroughly strange ship, under strange officers, and are strangers to each other. The chief officer has the unenviable task of getting them into order, not having a man that he can depend upon. Yet it is from that strange crew he must select look-out men, helmsmen, and leadsmen during the ten or twelve hours’ darkness of the following night.”—Extract of letter from Captain H. A. Moriarty, R.N., to the ‘Nautical Magazine’ for November 1875.

[307] My readers should be informed that a premium of insurance on chartered freight out and home is much higher in proportion, than if insured out only, and then, after arrival at port of destination, home only.

[308] Royal Commission on Unseaworthy Ships, Appendix to the Report No. 51, and Questions 11,516 and 13,072.

[309] See ‘Final Report,’ p. 16.

[310] See ante, [p. 318], note, and [p. 480].

[311] See ante, [p. 321]. The Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, which is quite as large as the Merchant Shipping Code Bill, now ready, passed through Committee in one forenoon sitting.

[312]

Years.Ships belonging to the British Empire at the end of each Year, 1850 to 1874 inclusive.British Steam Vessels Entered and Cleared in the Foreign Trade in the United Kingdom, 1850 to 1874 inclusive.
Number.TonsNumber.Tons.
185034,2814,232,9628,3501,802,955
185234,4024,424,3927,0591,980,473
186038,5015,710,96812,7774,186,620
186239,4276,041,35815,2015,239,493
187037,5877,149,13429,36913,341,058
187236,8047,213,82935,57017,430,029
187336,8257,294,23037,17518,943,653
187436,9357,533,49237,60619,408,527

[313] See [Appendix No. 14], p. 637. Tonnage entered and cleared in the United Kingdom, United States, France, Holland, Norway, Prussia, and Sweden, distinguishing between national and foreign ships from 1850 to 1873.