As most of my readers are aware, a system of compulsory apprenticeship was established in the year 1844, but was abolished by the repeal of the Navigation Laws in 1849, and, though some Shipowners, subsequently, desired to restore this system, the Government could not, with any regard to principle, meet their views. The object of training boys for the sea service having been to secure a supply of seamen for the Royal Navy as well as for the Merchant Service, it would have been unjust to compel Shipowners to train boys for the public service after they had been deprived of the special privileges, supposed to be advantageous, conferred on them by the Navigation Laws. But, as an impression prevailed that our seamen had deteriorated, both in number and quality, since the Compulsory Apprenticeship Act was abolished—though I think this is to be attributed to other and different causes—the Commissioners suggested a scheme to meet the existing evil. They proposed that every vessel above 100 tons register, whether propelled by sail or steam, should be required to carry a certain number of apprentices in proportion to her tonnage, or to pay a small contribution annually (such as 6d. per ton), to be applied towards the maintenance of training ships in all the principal ports in the kingdom. They recommended that the apprentices should be indentured at or about the age of fourteen to the master of the training ship for five years; that, after serving in this ship for one or two years, the indenture should be transferred to any Shipowner who would be willing to take the apprentice, and with whom the apprentice might be willing to serve, until the completion of his term, and that these school ships should be inspected and receive grants from the State according to their efficiency.
No doubt the system of apprenticeship affords the best means of training boys for a service in which fitness can only be acquired during early life. But the success of the system of training boys for the Royal Navy, recommended by the Commission on Manning the Navy in 1859 (of which I had the honour to be a member) is so far questionable that I think some other mode of obtaining the requisite supply of seamen for the navy might have been adopted which would have been more efficacious and much less expensive.
For instance, “a self-supporting pension fund for the benefit of seamen, as suggested by the Manning Commission of 1859 might,” they said, “prove of great value in creating a tie to bind the British seaman to the Merchant Service of his own country,”[265] and would, I venture to suggest, if properly organised have been a more effective mode of training and maintaining the requisite number of seamen for the Royal Navy as well as the Merchant Service. The Commissioners were also of opinion that, though not strictly within the scope of their inquiry, a self-supporting pension fund “well deserved the attention of Government.”[266]
The desertion of seamen in foreign ports was a matter which, in the opinion of the Commissioners, “deserved the serious attention of the Government, inasmuch as British ships are now often obliged to sail on their return voyage, when heavily laden, with insufficient or incompetent crews,” and they recommended entering into arrangements with foreign governments for some international conventions which should have for their object the prevention of desertion and the enforcement of better discipline in our ships when abroad.
Marine Insurance.
The question also of marine insurance was one which received most careful consideration. The Commissioners felt that while the system protects Shipowners against losses which would otherwise be ruinous, it tends to render them less careful in the management of their ships, and they were, evidently, alive to the fact that it relieved the Shipowner from all loss, when his ship foundered at sea, and frequently enabled him to derive a pecuniary profit from shipwreck. But to this difficult and important question I shall fully refer hereafter, as also to the system of advance notes inquired into by the Commission.
Report, as a whole, most valuable.
Considered as a whole the Report of the Commissioners is one of the ablest documents I have ever examined, and, from the mass of valuable evidence they have taken, and the care with which it has been analysed, most of their recommendations are eminently qualified to effect the great object in view—to reduce to the lowest possible extent the loss of life and property at sea.
FOOTNOTES:
[239] In 1816, according to the official returns, the merchant navy of the United Kingdom amounted to 2,783,933 tons; and in 1835 to 2,783,761 tons, or a fraction less; but we know that, at the former period, there were a great many more vessels on the Register than there actually existed, from the fact that no means were then taken to ascertain the losses, or to erase from the records vessels which were lost.