[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 seamen | 237 | 48,760 |
| Examinations | 13 | 3,355 |
| Mercantile marine offices | 237 | 24,416 |
| Surveyors, emigration officers, tonnage measurers, recorders of draught of water | 154 | 30,078 |
| Nautical assessors | .. | 3,000 |
| Total | 641 | 109,609 |
[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:—