No candidate for the pilotage service is admitted for examination if he is under fifteen or over eighteen years of age, or unless he is able to read and write well, and possesses a fair knowledge of arithmetic. He must also present a medical certificate of sound health, and be physically competent for the labour he has to undergo. When these requirements are met to the satisfaction of the Board, he is, after a month’s probation, apprenticed for seven years, the Board reserving to itself the power of cancelling his indentures should he fail to give satisfaction or prove incompetent for his duties. At the expiration of his third year of apprenticeship he becomes eligible for examination for a third-class licence; at the end of five years he may be promoted to the second class; and after a third examination he may be admitted, at the expiration of his apprenticeship, to a full licence.
Pilot-boats.
Every pilot-boat must be of at least forty tons, painted in a particular manner, and have on board, besides a complete equipment of spars, sails, and the ordinary stores and provisions, “two punts for boarding vessels, a good telescope, two lanterns, a swivel or other small gun, and a supply of rockets and bluelights for making signals; also a sufficient number of life-buoys and life-belts,” as well as an approved chart of the Bay of Liverpool, and charts of the latest survey of the various places under the jurisdiction of the Board, or which its pilots are required to frequent. Each pilot-boat has a master, second master, and third master, and ten apprentices, who, with the other pilots on board, are to take charge of vessels in rotation, according to their respective grades and qualifications, so that every man has a fair proportion of labour, the master in command always having a discretionary power to set the turn aside in peculiar cases, the circumstances of every such case being duly entered in the log-book, and reported to the Pilotage Committee when required. The earnings of each of the pilot-boats, which, by the way, are private property, licensed by the Board, are divided into shares and distributed in fixed proportions among the owners, masters, and crew, according to their class. Seven separate stations are allotted to the boats on the look-out for inward-bound vessels, which must be strictly kept, so that it is hardly possible, even in the thickest or most stormy weather, for any ship approaching the banks to miss a pilot-boat, if the captain adopts the most ordinary precautions, and the means readily available to find one. The duty of the seventh and last of these boats is to take the pilots out of vessels outward bound, and when she has her complement of pilots and apprentices on board, to return with them to Liverpool.
and rates of pilotage.
The pilotage rates, limited by Act of Parliament, are levied by scale according to the draught of water. An extra charge, regulated by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, is allowed for piloting ships beyond the Liverpool pilotage limits, as also for transporting vessels from certain prescribed places, or transferring them from one dock to another.
FOOTNOTES:
[340] 8 Anne, chap. xii.
[341] ‘Commercial Dictionary,’ p. 1504.
[342] ‘Commercial Dictionary,’ p. 1505.