MR. MAC IVERasked the President of the Board of Trade, If it is true that, at the instance of the Board of Trade, Mr. Septimus Howell, managing owner of the schooner "Leader," has been twice taken into custody under a warrant, with the results that the first case was dismissed by the magistrates at Runcorn, and that in the second case Mr. Howell was prosecuted for misdemeanour before Mr. Justice Brett at the last Liverpool Assizes and acquitted; and, whether the Board of Trade intend to compensate Mr. Howell for the loss and injury to his business, and the expenses to which he has been put by these prosecutions, and if it is also intended to make Mr. Howell any allowance in respect of the ignominy to which he has been subjected?
§ SIR CHARLES ADDERLEYThe case of the Leader I have already laid before the House as signally illustrating the carefulness with which the law since 1871 has made it a misdemeanor to send an unsafe ship to sea, and the great advantage given to the owner, in the way of opportunity, to exculpate himself. An official inquiry reported the Leader to be totally rotten, and that the owner must have known it. On this report the Board of Trade prosecuted, a warrant being legally necessary in such a case. The magistrates would not commit for trial, but refused costs, giving the defendant the benefit of some confliction of evidence. Mr. Howell continued to sail the ship, and on her arrival at Plymouth she was again reported to the Board of Trade, who thereupon ordered a survey. The surveyor reported that she was in a dangerous condition, and it became the duty of the Board of Trade to prosecute Mr. Howell a second time. Brought up on a warrant, as was legally necessary in such a case, before the magistrates of Liverpool, he was committed for trial at the Assizes, the magistrates saying that a primâ facie case was made out against him, and that it was important. The defendant's own witness said that it would be difficult to exaggerate the rottenness of the Leader's timbers; but, availing himself of the statutory permission, the defendant obtained an acquittal, the Judge (Mr. Justice Brett) having put it to the jury to consider whether he had not used reasonable means for safety. The proceedings having been regularly and reasonably instituted, and the result most fortunate for the owner, there seem no grounds whatever for giving him compensation. Mr. Howell has himself admitted the absolute unseaworthiness of his ship, and has since sold her for an old hulk.