§ MR. BARKER (Penryn and Falmouth)To ask the President of the Board of Trade if the Board have sanctioned the reduction of the freeboard on cargo ships, in consequence of which vessels will be permitted to be loaded from six to twelve inches above the recognised load-line; and, if so, will he state what justification there is for this proceeding, and if he will take steps to minimise the danger to life and property from reducing the freeboard.
(Answered by Mr. Lloyd-George.) In March last the statutory tables of freeboard under which load-lines are assigned to vessels were so modified as to permit of the deeper loading, in varying degrees ranging from six to twelve inches, of certain classes of vessels of modern construction and approved strength, but the older vessels which do not come up to this standard are allowed no such deeper 1096 loading. Such modification is provided for by Section 438 of The Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, and was adopted by the Board of Trade upon the recommendation of Lloyd's Register of British and Foreign Shipping, the Bureau Veritas, the British Corporation for the Survey and Registry of Shipping (the authorities appointed by statute to assign freeboards to vessels), and by the responsible technical officers of the Department, and the recommendation was made after careful consideration of the experience of the sixteen years' working of the tables, and of the result of exhaustive inquiries as to modern practice, both as regards the structure and seaworthiness of vessels. The investigations of the assigning bodies mentioned clearly led them to the conclusion that the deeper loading would in no way increase the danger to life and property in the vessels concerned.