Possibly even in this day it might not be hard to find sea veterans who would secretly agree with Mr. Hutchinson’s protest, and lament the extinction of an epoch when the quadrant and the log-line were thought “larning” enough. At any rate, I have a lively recollection of reading something closely corresponding to such views in the British Merchant Service Journal, the organ of the London Shipmasters’ Society, for 1879–80.
PLATES AND RIVETS.[[78]]
[78]. Written in 1882.
The great shipping question of the day is the loadline. Who is to be responsible for Plimsoll’s mark? Is the shipowner to go on fixing it at his own risk, or will the Government fix it for him? and if so, where? Is the carrying power of a vessel to be calculated by her surplus buoyancy, or is her clear side to be taken in relation to her depth of hold?—and is it possible to fix one loading point for all vessels, whether they be well-decked ships, or flush-decked ships, or hurricane-decked ships? All these are scientific conundrums, which will have to be solved sooner or later. They are certainly of the gravest possible moment to the shipping interests. As the law now stands, a shipowner is permitted to determine at what height on the vessel’s side a loadline shall be fixed; but, if, in the opinion of the officials, the loadmark does not furnish sufficient freeboard, the ship can be stopped, and forced to discharge as much of her cargo as shall raise her to the height the officials may consider she requires. The injustice of this is tolerably obvious. Practically, the Board of Trade have their preconceived theory of the proper freeboard of every vessel. They or their representatives say, “Yonder is a vessel of three thousand tons. She needs so many feet of clear side. Her owners, in our opinion, are overloading her. But let them proceed. When she is full, her stores, crew, and passengers aboard, and everything ready for the voyage, we will stop her and force her to disgorge.” Now, if the Board of Trade can decide after, why can they not decide before? Why should shipowners be obliged to guess at the theories of freeboard which the Board have in their mind, and be visited with the penalty of a costly delay if their conjectures should be wrong? The Government authorities say, We will not fix the loadline: you must do that at your own risk. But practically they do fix the loadline by empowering their representatives to stop ships which look to be overloaded. Surely it would be more consistent with common sense and common justice to determine a loadline for the shipowner before he fills up his ship than to keep the determination carefully concealed from him until his vessel is about to start or actually has commenced her voyage.
This, then, as I have said, is the great shipping question of the times, and it is the outcome of the wise and humane consideration how to diminish the perils of the deep for those who have to seek a living upon it. It is to be hoped that the numerous scientific controversies which have grown out of the subject of the loadline may not overcloud and conceal the object the Plimsoll disc was intended to effect. That object was to prevent owners from sending human lives to sea aboard ships so deeply freighted that the first heavy gale of wind was bound to sink them. Unhappily departmental timidity has gone very near to neutralizing a great and beneficent measure without satisfying the class who were to be appeased and quieted. Many overladen ships contrive somehow to sneak off to sea unnoticed by those functionaries whose duty it is to stop such vessels. If they founder with all hands the law considers itself sufficiently avenged by mulcting the owners and imprisoning them. Unfortunately, this does not save the sailor’s life. It is another illustration of the truth that every special interest is bound to suffer from the lack of thoroughness in the measures of those to whom it looks for protection. One seems to find the same perfunctoriness in most of the legislation that deals with sailors. It was a good thing to extinguish the old floating coffins. And yet it was but a half-measure, too. It was merely the lopping of a few twigs from a great rotten branch. A much larger evil than the despatching of unseaworthy ships was left untouched—I mean the construction of unseaworthy ships. It was monstrous, indeed, that men should be allowed to send on a dangerous voyage vessels which had been afloat for years and years, cobbled-up old fabrics which leaked like sieves, but whose safety was a matter of profound indifference to their owners, because of the insurance that must make whatever happened good luck to them. But it seems to me much more monstrous that men should be allowed to build ships—every one of which carries as large a company of souls as would equip a whole fleet of the old condemned coasters—whose iron frames and whose iron plates are fit for nothing but to be branded with the word “Murder,” so that when the metal fragments come ashore the beholder may know for what purpose they were designed.
Legislation has protected the sailor; but read the reports of the marine inquiries held. Take the trouble to count for yourself the number of missing ships—missing nobody knows how or why—which are catalogued in a short twelvemonth. Glance at the depositions of the men brought ashore from vessels which have foundered under their feet. Here are facts speaking with a trumpet-tongue, sounding a deep and bitter reproach upon our British ears, and converting our legislative efforts into mere irony. Will any seaman pretend that Plimsoll’s mark, as we now have it, has abridged, by so much as one sixty-fourth part of the whole, the perils he had to face before the question of freeboard was ever made a subject of discussion? Will he assert that the extinction of the “floating coffin” has increased the chances of his safety, in the face of the innumerable iron ships which are, month after month, slipped along the ways into that ocean whose bottom they are bound to sound in due course? I am not speaking of the great ocean passenger steamship; she, no doubt, in point of construction and strength, may be as perfect as she looks, with the exterior gilt and paint, and the interior sumptuousness of velvet, and silk, and polished panelling. I am referring to the class of vessels which are doing the work of the old condemned coasters, and more than the work, since we find them pushing into seas into which the “coffin” never ventured. “The vessel did not arrive at her destination,” runs the report of a recent inquiry held by Mr. H. C. Rothery; “it may, therefore, fairly be concluded that she has gone to the bottom, and the object of the present inquiry is to ascertain, if possible, how she has been lost.” If possible!
To show the character of that possibility the Annex prints it thus “...”
Could anything be more eloquent? Will the builder interpret those points to signify his rivet-holes?
Or take from a late deposition the narrative of a shipmaster, who relates that “he proceeded;” the wind was so and so; such and such a light bore N.W., the land was three miles distant, the sea smooth, and the vessel steaming full speed. On a sudden it was noticed that the ship was down by the head. The engineer sounded the forehold, and found nearly four feet of water in it. Then all hands were called on deck and the steam pumps set to work. But the water gained on the pumps, and meanwhile the vessel steadily continued to settle down by the head. The fore hatches were removed, and nearly six feet of water found. The pumps continued working, and the crew baled with might and main with buckets. But all was of no good, so deponent got the boats ready for use. He tried to drive his ship shorewards, but she would not answer her helm, on which he stopped the engines and lowered the boats. They were picked up by another vessel, and shortly after they were aboard the ship they had quitted went down head foremost.