“How on earth did the builders manage to get that cruelly ill-built vessel passed?” was asked not long since.
“Why, sir,” was the answer, “by taking care that the surveyor saw her through no other medium than a bottle of champagne.”
A glass of liquor may cost a hundred lives; but the surveyor still keeps his place, and draws his little salary, and goes on passing bad work, with every shipwright in his district sniggering over the man’s complaisance. Is it a system proper to denounce? I think it is; and no disinterested person who is in the secret but must deplore it as deeply dishonouring to the highest and most opulent and fertile branch of British industry, and as a species of legalized and truly rank conspiracy against the lives of passengers and sailors.
I have briefly referred to the case of the Clan Macduff; it will serve my purpose to give a more particular instance of marine surveying as I found it reported at length in one of the shipping journals. The brig Scio was a wooden vessel built in 1839, and she was still afloat in 1881. She was the property of a Mr. Blumer Bushell, of South Shields, who had purchased her for £110, probably quite as much as she was worth. She was docked and repaired at a cost of £336. Her first start, after leaving the doctor’s hands, was unfortunate, for she went ashore at Kunda and damaged her keel. This was repaired, £84 being spent upon her. Next voyage she went to sea with a crew of eight hands, and a load of four hundred and twenty-nine tons of coal, her registered tonnage being a trifle over two hundred and sixty-five. Scarcely was she at sea when she was found to be making water. The master’s attention was engrossed by the job of pumping, in the midst of which the wind breezed up hard, the vessel fell off, the mainboom jibed and broke in halves, one piece of which, falling upon a boy, struck him down dead. The leak increased, and the crew compelled the master to run for Leith Roads. Here the vessel was placed on the mud, and caulked as high as nine feet of water around her would let the irons go. Thus soldered, she started once more, and plumped on to Inchkeith. She was towed off after discharging fifteen tons of cargo, and was docked with four hundred and fourteen tons of coal in her bottom. A portion of her crew now refused to share any more of her fortunes, so they were discharged and others shipped in their room. Once more this noble brig proceeded, but had not put fifteen miles betwixt her and the land when the crew came aft in a body, swore that the water was coming in fast and must presently drown the ship, and begged the master to put back. This he did, in the face of a strong head wind, which obliged him to beat up the Firth of Forth in short tacks. By-and-by a squall came along and blew the lower fore-top-sail out of the bolt-ropes. Soon afterwards the Scio struck on some sands off Buckhaven, but managed to beat over them. The master said he now wanted to haul his brig off the land, but that the men refused to turn to. The crew denied this, but, let the truth be what it would, not long after the vessel had beaten over the sands she went ashore somewhere north of Kirkcaldy, on which the crew very sensibly got out. Such is the picturesque history of a brig which no man will believe could by any possibility have been found afloat in these days of the stringent Merchant Shipping Act, and of surveyors appointed by the Board of Trade to stop rotten vessels from proceeding to sea. It was declared at the re-hearing—for a good deal of litigation was generated by this dismal old brig—that two shipwright surveyors, who were officers of the Board of Trade, inspected the vessel whilst under repairs, visiting her several times and pointing out what should be done. Yet you will have observed that the Scio never quitted the dock without all hands going to the pumps, only to knock off in order to come aft and request the skipper to put back to save their lives. And, as if this most unimpeachable testimony to the value of Board of Trade surveying was not of sufficient weight, there comes a Mr. Turner into court with samples of the timbers and planks of the wreck which he had inspected on the beach, and this gentleman deliberately declares—pointing to the samples as he speaks—that, from the survey he made of the wretched old hooker’s remains, she was unseaworthy.
There is no arrogance in pretending to wisdom after the event has happened. The surveyors might affirm what they chose, but we, having the end of the story under our eyes, are at full liberty to say that no declarations that the brig was seaworthy can make her seaworthy in the face of the water that ran into her bottom, and that kept the crew pumping and hurrying back to land to save their lives. Theories are excellent things in the absence of facts; but when a fact comes in the road the biggest theory must make way. The pumping and the putting back are the most satirical commentaries which can be imagined on the declarations of the Board of Trade surveyors. What is their notion of seaworthiness? Is it pumping morning, noon, and night, and all hands imploring the skipper to put his helm up and try back? If it be not that, if, on the contrary, they define seaworthiness to consist of a tight, well-found craft, how are they going to reconcile the results of their survey of the brig Scio with the results of her attempted voyages?
I quote this example of surveying because it is illustrative of the worthlessness of the supervision practised by the Board of Trade under the present system of protecting life and property, and because it is typical of much of the work that is done in that way by the men who are paid to look after the interests they represent. The land-going justices who sat at a re-hearing of the first investigation absolved the owner on the grounds that he did all that he could to render his brig seaworthy—that is to say, “taking into consideration the precautions taken by the owner, under the surveillance of the Board of Trade surveyors at Shields and at Leith, and having all the work executed by practical men of long standing, the Court could come to no other conclusion than that set forth in the judgment.”
But what said the assessors, the nautical element in this investigation? “We do not concur in this judgment ... and will furnish our own report.” That report is the only endurable supplement to the justices’ annex that could be devised. The writers declare that the brig was not properly and efficiently repaired, and that she was not in a good and seaworthy condition when she left Leith; “that, in their opinion, the Scio was in all probability in a worse state when she left Leith on November 26th than when she left the Tyne on the 2nd.” They deny that the owner used all those reasonable means in opening the Scio out and ascertaining her exact condition which, as a practical man, he should have known a vessel of her age required, “and which he had such ample and available means of doing in his own dock, thereby neglecting to ensure her being sent to sea in a seaworthy condition.”
The whole story bears out this decision; and, the assessors’ judgment being unquestionably correct, what are we to think of the surveyors who could allow the brig to go to sea leaking like a sieve and then come into court and speak well of the vessel on the grounds that they had superintended the repairing of her and had even pointed out what should be done? In this case, happily, no lives were lost; the brig went ashore and her people left her. But, suppose she had gone down and drowned her crew out of hand, would not the Board of Trade, in the person of their representative, have been morally guilty of the death of the men? Assuredly they accepted the responsibility of that brig being in a fit condition to go to sea, as they accept the responsibility of every vessel which their representatives pass being seaworthy. This consideration ought surely to give significance to the system of supervision they now practise; and to make them ask themselves whether, having regard to the weight and solemnity of their self-imposed obligations, they have any right, as servants of the public, to persist in multiplying the perils of the deep by a sham and hollow method of inspection. There is not a shipmaster in the country who is not sensible of the necessity of a speedy reform in this matter; and there is not a passenger who would not eagerly join in the cry for reformation were even but a very little bit of the truth published in language which should be intelligible to the landsman.[[79]]
[79]. This was written five years ago. In five years, at the present rate of living, many changes happen; yet I do not find a single statement made in this paper that I can expunge or modify as a fact of to-day, as it was a fact five years since.