SECOND READING. (Hansard, 14 May 1873)

§ MR. PLIMSOLL,

in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, if, in the excess of his anxiety that a measure should pass that Session dealing with the more obvious and easily remediable cases of loss of life at sea, he should show any intemperance of language or feeling, he trusted the House 1988 would grant him some indulgence, because it would arise from his conviction that the lives of many hundred men hung in the balance at that moment. He had been repeatedly and from many quarters charged with making exaggerated statements respecting that great evil, and some of these charges were probably made in perfect good faith. Hitherto, however, he believed he had made no specific statement whatever which was incapable of proof; but he thought it desirable to supplement his own statement of the case by the evidence of one or two witnesses who would be accepted by the House as unimpeachable. The underwriters at Liverpool might be supposed to understand the question under consideration; and at a meeting held by them some time ago, he found that a question submitted to the shareholders was the increase apparent not only in the magnitude, but the number of marine disasters; and that, notwithstanding our boasted improvements in naval science, and when we seemed to have reduced within narrow limits every element of danger. Unfortunately—it was said at that meeting—underwriters had to deal occasionally with men who cared little about the profits of the carrying trade; men whose whole commercial history was made up of accommodation bills, average statements, liquidations, and composition deeds; who were always on the lookout for some crazy craft to insure; who stood in the same position as to underwriters which Palmer stood in as to Life Assurance Companies; who pursued their nefarious calling under an honourable garb, and sometimes under the cloak of religion; and it was such men who were responsible for the heavy losses which underwriters had to sustain. He had stated that he believed these were the practices of but a very small number of men; and he thought it wonderful that in the absence of all legislation on the subject, things were no worse than they were, and that the great majority of those who were connected with our shipping trade had so much care for the lives of their seamen. The next case he would refer to, in order to prove that his statements were not exaggerated, was that of a well-known shipowner of Shields, who had made over £100,000 by these practices, in such a way that when he died 1989 the police had to be brought to protect his remains to the grave, on account of the indignation of the multitude of women and children who followed to pelt the hearse with mud. He would now read a letter from Mr. James O'Dowd, a gentleman who had conducted for many years all the investigations of the Board of Trade into cases of wreck, but who had at last retired in disgust from the task, alleging that he was ashamed to be a party to it. Mr. O'Dowd, who had kindly permitted him to mention his name, wrote from the Custom House, February 24, 1873, as follows:— Sir,—You have made a move in the cause of humanity for which you deserve immortal credit. I have not seen your book, but I read a review of it in The Times with the deepest interest. Cases have occurred where delinquents have been executed for murder who deserved the gallows less than the moneyed barbarians who have sent overladen ships to sea. I send you enclosed an illustration of the justice of my statement. But, to judge accurately of the disgraceful ease, you should read the evidence on the inquiry. It was proved that the decks were so laden with bales of cotton that the crew had to stand and walk on the top of them so as to navigate the ship; and Mr.—, a shipowner examined for the defence, swore that the higher the bales were piled the more it conduced to safety, as, if the ship went down, the crew and passengers would have a better chance of escaping. Briefly, the facts were these—2,700 and odd lives were every year lost by shipwreck. He did not think that a fourth of that loss could be traced to well-found, well-loaded, well-manned ships. We had no records in this country to account for the loss of such ships except in fog; though, no doubt, some casualties were due to negligence. Many people talked of shipowners being "unfortunate." There was no such word. If an old woman was brought before a magistrate for trying to persuade some credulous servant-maid that the stars had some malign influence over her destiny, she was, very properly, sent to prison as an impostor. And yet we were asked to believe that the winds had favourites. No such thing. When the winds blew, if they found a ship well-manned she was buffeted about, but those on board were in no danger. But in those long, low, narrow, overladen beasts of ships, when the ship could not ride over the waves, the waves rode over the ship, with the men in her—often a thousand times better men than 1990 those who sent them to sea. In fact, he believed that by proper legislation, they could so reduce the loss of life from shipwreck as to make everyone wonder that the attention of the Legislature had not been directed to the subject before. It was said he ought to be satisfied with having got a Commission. Well, he sincerely hoped and believed that the Commission would do much good; but, if so, it ought to have plenty of time to investigate that important subject in all its bearings. But it could not have all the time required, unless some temporary measure was passed; if that were not done, we should incur all the danger of an ill-considered and hasty Report. On the other hand, if a temporary measure were passed, which need not infringe at all on the dignity of the Commission, there would be no occasion to hurry, and then we should have proper measures recommended. It was perfectly competent by the forms of the House to pass a temporary Bill, and move for a Royal Commission. It was also said that his head was turned with the favour which he had received from the public and from that honourable House. No such thing. In the book which he had published, it would be seen that he had already traced for himself the course which he was now pursuing. He had done nothing hastily, nothing rashly; he had discounted beforehand, and still did discount, all the annoyance that might come upon him, and he was able to bear up against it, because he was prepared for it. He had taken up the matter calmly and deliberately, believing that no good would be done until seine one should take it up regardless of consequences. His course, therefore was a resolute and consistent course, taken up after full deliberation and pursued through good and evil report. It had been alleged that the survey which he proposed would create enormous inconvenience to the shipping interest. But if the House would now consent to the second reading of the Bill, he should not propose to proceed with the Committee until the end of June, because he should hope in the meantime that the Government would offer a measure based perhaps on an ad interim Report of the Royal Commission. Further, the inconvenience to the shipping interest might be lessened by postponing the operation of the Act, should it become one, until the 1st of 1991 November. Another thing that would lessen the inconvenience was this—ships built within the last four or five years, and, therefore, presumably seaworthy, might be exempted from the operation of the Act, until they were five years old. He now came to the load line, which, most unfortunately for him, had been described as a "hard-and-fast line." It appeared so in the Schedule, but was not intended to be so. What he desired to arrive at was such a degree of immersion as, in the opinion of the most experienced men, a ship might safely put to sea with. The principle he had in view was this—that ships needing repairs should not be allowed to go to sea until they had been repaired, nor should ships be overloaded to a degree that would endanger their safety. What he proposed in this respect would be capable of instant application. On Saturday last, he was at Newcastle, and some shipowners there pressed him to attend a meeting of their body at the Guildhall. He did so, and a deputation was appointed to proceed to London this week to confer with him and the President of the Board of Trade. Having given in detail an account of what he proposed, the Chairman said that he had never heard the matter put in that light before, and another gentleman remarked that if they had known before what he had proposed there would have been no opposition from them to it. They then submitted to him a scale of freeboard proposed by a gentleman of Hartlepool of considerable experience, and he thought it very excellent. He had since consulted persons of authority on the subject, and they said that it was possible before winter to apply the principle in question, and he should gladly adopt it, and be willing to see it accepted in Committee. He did not want to subject respectable shipowners to the slightest inconvenience. His object was to put his foot on those who wore unsound. Now, with regard to deck-loading, the law prohibiting the practice altogether had been swept away in 1862, as it was said, in the interests of trade, and with the most mischievous results. He proposed that it should be revived under certain regulations. It was said that other nations would have an advantage over us if we imposed restrictions in this respect. No such thing. It was we who gave the law to maritime nations, 1992 and Canada, with her seaboard frozen up four months of the year, had not been slow to set us a good example, for she had that year passed an Act prohibiting deck-loading between certain months and limiting it in others. He had been asked by the assembled shipowners at Newcastle whether he would accept certain limitations which they approved instead of his own, and he should be very glad to do so in Committee. With reference to fees, it was said that to charge shipowners fees would be unfair. He admitted the abstract justice of the objection; but he could not omit fees in the measure, lest, in any way, he might inflict an injury upon Lloyd's and other shipping associations. Before the Royal Commission finished its labours he believed it would be necessary to subsidize those great agencies, to give them the protection of the law, and ask them to undertake certain work which he felt sure the State could not perform. He was told that Lloyd's and the Liverpool people were about to amalgamate, and if they did we should have a magnificent staff of able and competent men capable of doing everything that would be required. They already surveyed 11,000 out of a total of 26,000 ships. He believed that the Bill now before the House, the second reading of which he was advocating in the interest of hundreds of living men, who would cease to be living men within 12 months if it did not pass, would be received with favour by the shipowners of the country generally. He felt warranted in saying so from the assurances he had received. The compulsory survey of unclassed ships would be a great advantage to the President of the Board of Trade. He often had occasion to make remarks with reference to the Department of the right hon. Gentleman, which were not intended for himself personally, but for certain officials connected with the Board of Trade of whom he had a very bad opinion. It was not his fault when he spoke of the Board of Trade if the President appropriated those remarks to himself; but this he would say, he believed that Board to be one of the worst managed Departments of the State. In The Westminster Review of that quarter was a most able article on the subject of our Mercantile Marine, which he would recommend to the perusal of hon. Gentlemen; and there was another splendid 1993 article in Engineering of last week, which he had got reprinted, and a copy of which he would send to every hon. Member of the House. When he saw the Prime Minister there that morning, he thought his presence was owing to the fact that the right hon. Gentleman felt some anxiety in the fate of our seamen. Unfortunately, however, the right hon. Gentleman had to go away in order to attend a meeting elsewhere. Now, it was impossible, without the consent of the Government, to get a second reading for the Bill that day. If the discussion was drawn out, the Order would become a dropped one, and he must search for another day with very little hope of accomplishing his object. He began to recognize that it was impossible to protect those people without the co-operation, active and sympathetic, of the Government; and it had been painfully borne in upon his mind that the interests of the working classes, when the issue lay between them and the capitalists, were safer with the other side of the House than with his own. Did they suppose that the working men of the country would be slow in arriving at that conclusion which had been forced upon his mind? He did not want to embroil himself with a party, or to say anything which he might afterwards wish he had not said; but this he knew, and he felt bound to state it, that the other side of the House had supported him with one single exception, and the Gentleman to whom he alluded was an example how evil communications corrupt good manners, for he had placed a Motion on the Notice Paper of the House at the instance of the Government; which, however, being threatened with the loss of his seat, he was induced to withdraw. His Bill would therefore inevitably be talked out, unless the House came to his assistance, under the peculiar circumstances of the case. He hoped the House, considering the vast interests at stake, would now give the Bill a second reading, for nothing was more uncertain than the tenure of life of an individual; but, on the other hand, nothing was more certain than the average length of human life under given circumstances. It might, therefore, be put down as a mathematical certainty that, in the absence of survey and of the load-line, many hundreds of men now living would not be living next year; and under these 1994 circumstances, forsooth, the House was asked to let things alone in order to save the dignity of the Royal Commission. He would be sorry to show any disrepect to the Royal Commission; but what he proposed was no disrespect. That was no ordinary matter of expediency or politics; it was a matter of life or death to hundreds of men to whom life was as dear as to any hon. Member of this House. He begged, he entreated, he implored the House to read the Bill a second time. If they could fancy that just outside the House they saw a ship before them on the rocks and the waves beating upon it, he believed there were many now present who—just as Lord William Hay leaped from Her Majesty's ship into the Tagus to save life while the tide was running 20 knots an hour—would risk their lives in the effort to save others. He hoped, therefore, the House would now pass the second reading of this Bill, and pass it with acclamation.

§ MR. T. E. SMITH,

in moving, as an Amendment— That, in the opinion of this House it is undesirable to legislate upon this subject until the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Regulations for preventing Overloading and Undermanning in the Mercantile Marine has reported, said, he wished to assure the House that in moving the Resolution he was not actuated by any hostility towards the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll). On the contrary, he sympathized with the objects of that hon. Member, and if a different course had been pursued by him, he should have been ready to co-operate with him. The House was aware that a Royal Commission had been appointed at the instance of the hon. Member, upon which were a distinguished Statesman and a number of hon. Members known for their knowledge of the subject and for their sympathy with their fellow-men while no one had been appointed to sit on it, who could be said to have a close connection with the matter into which the investigation was to be made. That being so, what did the hon. Member do? 1995 He came down to the House and asked them to legislate on the very subject for which a Royal Commission had been appointed. He (Mr. T. E. Smith), however, submitted that it would not be respectful to the Commission, while prosecuting its inquiry, if the House should proceed to actual legislation. That Commission commanded the confidence of the public and of the shipping interest; but he (Mr. T. E. Smith) thought he might fairly complain on the part of the shipowners of the country, of the way in which the Commission had thought fit to carry on the inquiry. It was, he believed, contrary to precedent when the character and honour of individuals were concerned, for the Commission to carry on the investigation with closed doors. But that was not all, for it allowed the hon. Member for Derby to be present at its proceedings, and if he was not able to attend, he was represented by a solicitor. The only explanation of the matter that he had been able to obtain was, that the hon. Member seemed to occupy the position of a public prosecutor, and that it was for the advantage of the Commission, that they should have full and free communication with him in reference to every witness. If the hon. Member desired to occupy the position of a public prosecutor, he (Mr. T. E. Smith) was not the man to blame him; but this he would say—that it was a principle unknown to English legislation, that a public prosecutor should discharge his functions, except in the presence of the accused. He wished to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade to the matter, and to press upon him to consider whether something could not be done to render the proceedings of the Commission accessible to the public. When a witness came before the Commission opposed to the views of the hon. Member for Derby, that hon. Gentleman had it in his power to telegraph to his friends all over the country to bring up their evidence to rebut anything that might be said on the other side. But, on the other hand, the shipowners had no opportunity afforded them to rebut any evidence which the hon. Member for Derby might lay before the Commission. Having asked Gentlemen to give their time, labour, and experience to investigate the subject, would it be in 1996 accordance with the feeling of the House or ordinary respect, without waiting for their Report, to take a leap in the dark and legislate without reference to any conclusion to which they might come? Such a course had never been taken before, and he did not believe the House of Commons would be inclined to adopt it on the present occasion. The hon. Member for Derby had at first excited a good deal of sympathy by the statements he had made in Liverpool, Hull, and other ports, and men of great eminence in the shipping interest had tendered him their support; but those who had been studying the subject were aware that a considerable change had been made since the hon. Member had produced his Bill. Mr. John Burns, of the Cunard line, who, by letter read at the Liverpool meeting, expressed strong sympathy with the hon. Member's views, had, within the last few days, in the Chamber of Commerce of Glasgow, supported a Petition, praying the House not to legislate till the Royal Commission had reported. A similar feeling prevailed on the Tyne, the Wear, and the Humber. The Resolution he desired to move might seem inconsistent with the fact that the Government themselves had brought in a Bill on this subject; but that Bill involved no new principle, and was only intended to extend the power already possessed by the Board of Trade under an old Act; and when it came on for a second reading it would be time enough to deal with it. The Bill of the hon. Member for Derby, on the other hand, did involve new principles and new legislation on matters which had been directly referred to the Royal Commission. Besides, the Bill now in the hands of hon. Members was altogether different from what it now appeared the hon. Member was prepared to make it. In fact, the hon. Member was so anxious to pass some Bill that he did not care exactly what its nature might be if he could only persuade the House to legislate on the subject. ["No!"] The hon. Member, had himself admitted this, if not, in words, at all events, in fact, for he had avowed his readiness entirely to alter two-thirds of the Bill. ["No!"] Why, he was prepared to alter the conditions of survey, and also the provisions as to deck-loading. Legislation on the subject, which might seriously affect a most important 1997 interest, should be well advised and well considered. The hon. Member recommended his Bill as a temporary and provisional measure; but provisional legislation was apt to be hasty and rarely worked well; it was seldom ever a step in the right direction, and often presented a hindrance to satisfactory legislation. They ought not to forget how easy it was to transfer ships to a foreign flag; and common rumour at some of our out-ports indicated that if this Bill were passed several shipowners were taking the steps preliminary to such a transfer. The consequence might be, that instead of having the bulk of the Mercantile Marine of the world, we should find trade carried on in British ships sailing under another flag, and manned by foreign seamen. This was a technical subject, and the details must be treated in a scientific manner. With respect to compulsory survey by the two bodies proposed for that purpose, Lloyd's and what was called the Liverpool Book, neither shipowners nor Government had any control over them, they were entirely irresponsible, and they had both altered their rules and regulations within the last few years. A department, therefore, must be constituted which should have the whole matter under its charge. The Board of Trade would have great difficulty in finding a sufficient number of competent surveyors, and it would be quite impossible to send ships to sea at all this summer. The adoption of a general survey might diminish the amount of wrecks and casualties, but would not diminish proportionally the loss of life. He could refer to figures to show that the great loss of life from shipwreck occurred on first-class regularly surveyed vessels—the Royal Charter for instance, where 440 lives were lost, the London, where 223 were lost, and the Northfleet, where 285 were lost. Those were all ships of the highest class in the Register, and had been officially surveyed by more than one authority.