34. Vice-Admiral CAMPBELL (for Mr. LLEWELLYN-JONES)asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that certificated captains and navigating officers are now required to submit to examination as lifeboatmen for the purposes of the Merchant Shipping (Safety and Load Line Conventions) Act, 1932; and whether, as this practice is resented by the merchant navy as being detrimental to discipline, he will issue regulations to lay down that a certificated deck officer is, ipso facto, qualified as competent to take charge of a boat?
§ Mr. RUNCIMANThere appears to be a good deal of misapprehension on this subject, and I am glad of the opportunity to make the position clear. The International Safety Convention of 1929, while recognising that a certificated deck officer is competent to take charge of a lifeboat, does not recognise such officers as possessing the qualifications of a certificated lifeboatman, which include training in the actual use of oars; and an officer cannot, therefore, be counted in the quota of certificated lifeboatmen required by the Statutory Life Saving Appliances Rules on all seagoing passenger steamers unless he holds a life-boatman's certificate. The Board of Trade do not consider it desirable as a general rule that officers should be included in the quota as this might interfere with their freedom in an emergency to exercise their proper functions of command and organisation; and as in most ships the number of certificated lifeboatmen carried exceeds the quota, there is no necessity so far as the Board of Trade are concerned for the certificated officers to hold lifeboatmen's certificates.