4061. If you did not give them credit, how did you find it necessary to deduct these supplies?-In that case the supplies may have been given under monthly allotment notes.
4062. What you mean is that the £1, 7s. 2d. which you state as the average of the deductions may have been paid either in cash or in goods?-Yes. I think I have explained that in the paper I have given in.
4063. You say in one of the letters you have quoted, that 'the supplies mentioned in the account consist mostly of meal, given to the men's families to account of their half pay notes, and on which the profits cannot pay cellar rents and servants' wages'?-When a half-pay note not due until the end of the month, and the wife sends in and wants some meal in the meantime, she gets the meal, and we deduct it from the half-pay notes when we pay them.
4064. Then the half-pay notes are not generally paid cash?-They are generally paid in cash, but before they are due we give them goods to account.
4065. Am I to understand that these notes are paid mostly in meal or mostly in cash?-They are paid partly in meal, and rest is paid in money when the notes are due. If a woman has 20s. of a half pay note, she gets perhaps 5s. in meal, and then she gets the rest of the money in full when it is due. The second column in the abstract I have produced, shows the actual goods advanced, and the actual money.
4066. Have you now got one of the forms of the advance note?- Yes [produces it]; that form is addressed to us.
4067. That is to say, you are to pay it?-Yes; and the woman, when she gets the money, signs her name on the back of the note.
4068. Is it not the case sometimes that in the lines issued to Lerwick seamen the order is to pay is in favour of the ship's agent himself?-Not that I know of.
4069. Has there been no indorsation by the seaman or his wife, in any case that you are aware of which was equivalent to an order to pay to the ship's agent himself?-That could only have had the effect of reserving the agent's claim against the shipowner.
4070. No, it would enable him to retain the money which he would be bound to pay at settlement or at the end of the month when the allotment note became due to the wife or sister, or other relation [Page 102] of the seaman. Have you known any case of that kind?-There may have been such cases, but I have not been aware of them.