A Call for the Plimsoll Mark

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 33, 2 November 1929, Page 21

A Call for the Plimsoll Mark

“The overmastering emotion that provoked a famous indictment was born of just such tragedies as’that of the Vestris, and they will continue unless Plimsoll’s safeguard be enforced abroad as well as at home,” said the “Manchester Guardia n” recently, on the subject of the “Plimsoll mark.

Those who witnessed the unveiling of the monument to Samuel Plimsoll on the Victoria Embankment last week could not but fee, in view of recent wrecks at sea, that the work Plimsoll star cd has not yet been completed. The House of Commons record B ives plimsoll’s speech that memorable day, July 22, 18<o, when Government Bill dealing with the Merchant Service was so altered in debate that it was decided to withdraw it.

This enraged Plimsoll, and in an impassioned appeal he said “I beg to move the adjournment of the House, Sir. I earnestly entreat the right hon. gentleman at the head of the Government not to consign some thousands of living human beings to undeserved and miserable; death. The Secretary of Lloyd’s tells a friend of mine that he does not know of i sinje ship which has been broken up voluntarily in the course of thirty years on account of its being worn out.

"Ships gradually pass from hand to hand and are bought by some needy and reckkless speculators who send them to sea with precious human lives And what is the consequence that ensues? It is that continually every winter hundreds and hundreds of brave men are sent to death, their waves are made widows and their children are made orphans in order that a few speculating scoundrels, in whose hearts there is neither the love of God nor the fear of God, may make unhallowed gains. “There are shipowners in this country of ours who have never either built a ship or bought a new one, but are simply what are called ship-

knackers* • < • “I am determined to unmask the villains who send to death and destruction . . v , “The scene which followed,” writes a “Manchester Guardian contributor, “did little credit to the Mother of Parliaments, though both Disraeli and Hartington were reluctant to proceed to extremes. Eventually Plimsoll made the necessary apology ; but he had won all along the line.

“The Cabinet was summoned, and in the last-fortnight of the session the Government hurried through a temporary measure giving the Board of Trade extraordinary powers of detaining ships; the responsibility of fixing a load line was thrown upon owners; and grain was prohibited in bulk where it formed more than one-third of the cargo.

“In 1876 came the Merchant Shipping Act, and from that followed, in due course, the whole series of legislation which has protected the. merchant seamen. That Plimsoll’s House of Commons speech was not, for him, exceptional may be judged from the style in which he wrote on the subject. If you refuse or neglect to use your influence before another year has run its course at least five hundred men, now in life, will strew the bottom of the sea with their dead, unburied, unresting bodies, and desolation and woe will have entered many and many a new happy home? “Plimsoll’s cause has gone on triumphing since his death,” asserts the “Daily Telegraph." “A notable advance was made in 1906, when the Plimsoll line or its equivalent was made obligatory on every foreign vessel using a British port, thus mitigating the grossly unfair competition of foreign owners who sent their ships into British waters with their marks awash. “But there are still countries which have no load-line regulations, the United States being one of them, as was emphasised anew at the recent Vestris inquiry, though it was-stated at the International Conference in London last April that legislative action on this subject was expected in Congress shortly. The wilful overloading of ships- beyond the safety limit is inexcusable.”

“Before very long,” states the “Times,” “the committee set up by the President of the Board of Trade under Sir Charles Sanders to consider possible changes in the load-line regulations will issue their report, and it is not improbable that this report may eventually lead to the holding of an international conference on the question as it affects the shipowners of the rest of the world. Not till all nations have adopted the same standard will it be possible to say that the work begun so long ago by Samuel Plimsoll and