Limitation of the liability of shipowners.
The ninth part of the Merchant Shipping Act defines or limits the liability of shipowners under certain circumstances; that is to say, shipowners are not liable, so far as regards fire, loss of life or personal injury, or loss of goods or merchandise, unless they have rendered themselves personally responsible, “to an extent beyond the value of their ship, and the freight due or to grow due in respect of such ship during the voyage.” This liability was further limited in 1862 by Mr. Milner Gibson when President of the Board of Trade.[147] The mode of procedure is laid down at length and with great perspicuity; but nothing in the Act is “to lessen or take away any liability to which any master or seaman, being also owner or part owner of the ship to which he belongs, is subject in his capacity of master or seaman.”
Various miscellaneous provisions.
The tenth part of the Act refers to the mode of legal procedure “in all cases where no particular country is mentioned within her Majesty’s dominions;” while the eleventh and last part deals with a few miscellaneous subjects, such as granting power to masters or owners of ships to enter into contracts, under certain circumstances, with Lascars or other natives of India for voyages to Great Britain, Australia, or other parts of her Majesty’s dominions: to corporations for the granting of sites for the erection of sailors’ homes: to the legislative authority of any British possession for the repeal, alteration or amendment of any provisions of the Act “relating to ships registered in such possession:” and to the Commissioners of Customs to recover from the Consolidated Fund, or from the Mercantile Marine Fund, all expenses incurred by them in the conduct of suits or prosecutions raised under the Act.
Such are the leading provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, one of the greatest, most useful, and salutary measures ever passed, the repeal of the Navigation Laws excepted, in connection with the mercantile marine of Great Britain.[148]
Act of 1855.
In the following year (1855) an Act, which may be taken as part of the great Act of 1854, was passed to facilitate the erection and maintenance of colonial lighthouses; to amend some of the clauses referring to light dues; to specify more distinctly the conditions of ownership and the nature of mortgages; and to exempt the owners of pleasure yachts from having their names and the port to which they belong painted on the stern, as in the case of merchant vessels. Additional powers were also given by this Act to naval courts abroad, in the case of misconduct of the master or crew: for the relief of destitute Lascars, and for other matters of minor importance.
FOOTNOTES:
[132] At that moment our prospects were certainly very gloomy, and it was not surprising that many of our shipowners were disposing of their property. On the other hand, as most of our shipbuilders were idle, it was a favourable moment to contract for the construction of ships. I, therefore, embraced the opportunity, and contracted in one week for six ships of an improved description, of about 1000 tons each. Two of these I built at Sunderland, two at Maryport, one in Dundee, and one in Jersey. Most of the old school of shipowners thought I had lost my senses, and prophesied “ruin;” but others thought there was “method in my madness,” and were thus encouraged to follow my example. Many of my readers may remember the jeering paragraphs which appeared in the Free-trade journals of the period, headed “Lindsay and more ruin,” “Not so bad as they seem,” and so forth. But the fact had an astonishing effect in rousing our shipowners from their dreams of despair, and I never had any reason to regret my “daring speculation.”
[133] Mr. T. C. Cowper, of Aberdeen, himself a member of a well-known shipbuilding firm in Aberdeen, who had spent some time in China at the period to which I now refer, and to whom I am indebted for much of the information connected with our struggles to maintain our position in that trade, gives the following graphic description of his voyage home in the Ganges, Captain Deas, belonging to Leith, one of the vessels we had sent forth soon after the repeal of our Navigation Laws, to compete with the Americans in that trade. “We landed,” he says, “new teas at Wampoa, and sailed on the 1st September, 1851. Two of the fastest American clippers, the Flying Cloud and Bald Eagle, sailed two or three days after us. A great deal of excitement existed in China about the race, the American ships being the favourites. The South-west monsoon being strong, the Ganges made a rather long passage to Anger, but when we arrived there we found that neither of our rivals had been reported as having passed. We arrived in the English Channel on the evening of the 16th of December. On the following morning at daylight we were off Portland, well in shore and under short sail, light winds from north-east, and weather rather thick. About 8 A.M. the wind freshened and the haze cleared away, which showed two large and lofty ships two or three miles to windward of us. They proved to be our American friends, having their stripes and stars flying for a pilot. Captain Deas at once gave orders to hoist his signals for a pilot also, and as, by this time, several cutters were standing out from Weymouth, the Ganges being farthest in shore got her pilot first on board. I said that I would land in the pilot boat and go to London by rail, and would report the ship that night or next morning at Austin Friars.” (She was consigned to my firm.) “The breeze had considerably freshened before I got on board the pilot cutter, when the Ganges filled away on the port tack, and, contrary to his wont, for he was a very cautious man, crowded on all small sails. The Americans lost no time and were after him, and I had three hours’ view of as fine an ocean race as I can wish to see; the wind being dead ahead, the ships were making short tacks. The Ganges showed herself to be the most weatherly of the three; and the gain on every tack in shore was obvious, neither did she seem to carry way behind in fore reaching. She arrived off Dungeness six hours before the other two, and was in the London Docks twenty-four hours before the first, and thirty-six hours before the last, of her opponents.”