§ MR. NANNETTI (Dublin, College Green)To ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the captain of the steamship "Elswick 248 Grange "discharged his crew at Hamburg on the 5th June, 1905, and refused to pay the cost of passage money to the United Kingdom for Lucaz Nerz, a seaman who engaged on the vessel at Barry Dock on the 12th February, 1905, on the ground that Nerz was a German subject; whether he is aware that His Majesty's Consul-General at Hamburg stated that he had instructions from the Board of Trade that German seamen discharged from British ships at Hamburg, although resident in the United Kingdom, are not entitled to have their passage defrayed to the port at which they originally shipped, and that a similar case was tried before Sheriff McKenzie at Glasgow on the 1st March, 1905, and that the sheriff held that Section 186 of The Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, applied to foreign seamen as well as to Britishers; and whether he will cause instructions to be issued to His Majesty's Consuls that all seamen serving on British ships are entitled to the protection provided for them by the section of the Act referred to.
(Answered by Mr. Bonar Law.) The Board of Trade are not yet in possession of all the facts with regard to the case referred to in the Question, but inquiries are being made, and the hon. Member shall be communicated with later.