HC Deb 25 March 1873 vol 215 cc105-9
MR. MELLY

asked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether his attention has been called to a speech by the honourable Member for Derby, in which he is reported to have made the following statement:— As to the animus of the Board of Trade, the Honourable Gentleman cited the case of an inquiry ordered by the House of Commons into the loss of the "Sea Queen," with twenty lives, in which the damning evidence of the Custom House officers and the lumpers as to the unseaworthy state of the ship had, he said, been deliberately suppressed, and a surveyor's report printed in the Blue Book, trying to exculpate the owners from their responsibility, they having, he declared, pocketed £25,000, as the profit of sinking, the owner, too, having superintended the loading; and, whether such statement is correct?

MR. HORSMAN

Before this Question is answered, I wish, Sir, to call your attention to it on a point of Order as being both inconvenient and objectionable. If a Member of this House makes a public statement, and then a Minister be asked whether that statement be or be not true, of course, if the Minister replies that it is not true, the hon. Member in his place may re-affirm that it is true, and may enter into details to prove that it is true. It is evident that must give rise to discussion, and therefore I put it to you, Sir, whether the Question is one that ought to be answered by the President of the Board of Trade?

MR. SPEAKER

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent (Mr. Melly) has called the attention of the President of the Board of Trade to a statement made by the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) out of this House; and I am asked by the right hon. Member (Mr. Horsman), whether there is anything irregular in putting a Question on that point. I am bound to say that I see nothing irregular in the Question of the hon. Member; but that Question is followed up by these words, "and whether such statement is correct." If the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent questions a statement made by a Member of this House, such a proceeding is irregular; but I do not understand that the hon. Member questions the statement made by the hon. Member for Derby. He only inquires of the President of the Board of Trade, whether the conduct of the officers of the Board of Trade was such as is stated by the hon. Member for Derby?

MR. MELLY

I assure you, Sir, that nothing is further from my intention than to imply, even in the most indirect manner, any doubt of the statement made by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby. But a statement having been made which appears capable of explanation, I thought it best for all purposes that that explanation should be given at the earliest possible moment.

MR. PLIMSOLL

May I beg to say a word or two? ["Order!"]

MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE

Sir, I quite understand the Question of my hon. Friend (Mr. Melly) as one not involving the veracity of the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll), but dictated by a desire to know whether I could throw any light on the facts of this case. I wish to give an answer with all the fulness I can, and the more so as it is a matter in which I am not personally concerned, it having happened a year before I became connected with the Board of Trade. The very extraordinary statements in the speech of the hon. Member for Derby the other night certainly require to be answered and contradicted. The information I have to give the House is this—First of all, the inquiry into the case of the Sea Queen was not ordered by the House of Commons—these inquiries are never ordered by the House of Commons—but was undertaken by the Board of Trade. The evidence of the Revenue officers was not suppressed, as the statement of the hon. Member for Derby implies. The facts are these:—An hon. Member of this House (Mr. Alderman W. Lawrence) gave Notice of a Question on the subject of this vessel on the 29th of March, 1870. He furnished the Board of Trade with certain letters, which alleged that the Sea Queen, which had gone down at sea, I think, without any survivors, had been dangerously overloaded at starting. On the same day—the 5th of April—the owners of the vessel sent to the Board of Trade the bill of lading and other documents; and upon the same day I find that these papers so volunteered were sent by the Board of Trade to the Collector of Customs at Newcastle, with instructions to inquire and report. On the 8th of April the Board of Trade received a reply from the Collector of Customs confirming with his opinion the allegation that the vessel was overloaded, and enclosing a statement from Mr. Bell, Examining Officer of Customs, to the effect that she was so overloaded. On the same day an inquiry was ordered by the Board of Trade. That inquiry was held at Newcastle, and lasted from the 28th of April till the 5th of May. The first witness examined was Mr. Bell, the Examining Officer, who made the statement I have referred to. The second witness was Mr. Lawson, the Chief Clerk of Customs at Newcastle, who had cleared the ship. The third witness was Mr. Sansom, senior Examining Officer and Acting Surveyor of Customs. Two other out-door officers of Customs, Mr. Newton and Mr. Kirkpatrick, were examined on the 30th of April. These officers were all sworn and cross-examined, and their evidence was given at length in the report of the inquiry presented to Parliament (Parliamentary Paper, No. 290, 1870). The statement originally given by Mr. Bell to the Collector at Newcastle was stated in the evidence to have been put in at the inquiry. This paper, however, with other papers stated to have been put in, appears never to have been sent to the Board of Trade, by whom the Report and evidence were sent to the printers precisely as they were received from the inquiry. I am not sure whether that point was in the mind of the hon. Member for Derby or not; but it is immaterial, since the preliminary Report to the Board of Trade was not made the subject of cross-examination as it was not on oath; whilst Mr. Bell, the author of the Report, was subsequently examined and cross-examined on oath, and his evidence is contained in the Papers moved for—namely, the Report and Evidence of the Court of Inquiry, which consisted of two magistrates and two professional assessors—one a Mercantile Marine captain, and the other a commander of the Royal Navy. It is not a fact that the evidence of the lumpers, as they are called, who discharged the cargo of the vessel was suppressed by order of the Board of Trade. It is not a fact that a surveyor's report was printed in the Blue Book trying to exculpate the owners from their responsibility. The facts are as follows:—The summoning of witnesses in these cases is left to the discretion of the solicitor who conducts the cases. His instructions are to summon all material and necessary witnesses, and he does so. In the present case he, no doubt, thought that the lumpers could add nothing to the mass of evidence already given. There was, in fact, a large mass of evidence given on the subject of overloading. I have today, for my own satisfaction, telegraphed to the Solicitor of Customs who conducted the inquiry, and asked him a question on the subject; and this is his reply— I conducted the inquiry 'in re Sea Queen,' and I adduced all the evidence that was available and material. It is wholly incorrect to say that I received any instructions from the Board of Trade to suppress any evidence. I am sure it is not necessary for me to assure the House of Commons that the gentlemen who are the superior permanent officials of the Board of Trade would have been utterly incapable of such an act as the suppression of evidence before a court of inquiry, or the suppression of it in this Paper, which was moved for and presented to the House of Commons. The hon. Member appears to fancy that a document was appended to that Parliamentary Paper for the express purpose of exculpating the owners, who, he implies, were in some collusion with the Board of Trade officials for that purpose. What happened is this:—The Report of that Court did not appear to the Board of Trade to be satisfactory. It was a vague and almost a self-contradictory Report. They reported against the practice of overloading, whilst, at the same time, they reported that "the Sea Queen was not over laden to such an extent as to render her dangerous." Under these circumstances, the Board of Trade of that day wished to clear up the matter, and they desired to have the best professional opinion they could obtain as to the practical and technical question whether a vessel, constructed and laden like the Sea Queen, could be considered safe and seaworthy or not. For that purpose they referred the case and all the evidence to their Chief Surveyor, Mr. Galloway. The Report he gave is here, and was added to the Parliamentary Paper. That Report does not tend, in the slightest degree, to exculpate the owners; it merely shifts the nature of the fault committed by the owners, because it says that, in the opinion of Mr. Galloway, it was not a question of freeboard—of that he thought the vessel had sufficient—but a question of strength; and he considered her strength was not sufficient to enable her to carry a large cargo of dead weight in safety. That Report was not so favourable to the owners as the Report of the Commission of Inquiry; and there is not a shadow of excuse for saying that the Report was added for the purpose of exculpating the owners. It was done in the interests of truth, and for the purpose of assisting the Board of Trade to come to some satisfactory conclusion as to the cause of the loss. The Board of Trade thought it necessary to add the Report to the Papers before Parliament; but how the addition of that Report can have diminished the value of those Papers, or shown any bad animus on the part of the Board of Trade, I cannot comprehend.