MERCANTILE MARINE ACT.

HL Deb 05 May 1851 vol 116 cc501-10

LORD STANLEY

said, I am anxious to direct the attention of your Lordships to a petition which deserves your especial consideration, because of the importance of the subject of which it treats, and of the body from whom it emanates. It is a petition which prays for the total repeal or the extensive modification of the Mercantile Marine Act, and it bears the signatures of no less than 6,000 shipowners, masters, mates, and seamen, of the Fort of Liverpool. (Minutes of Proceedings, 25.) They complain that in this, as in many other instances, the legislation which affects them has been founded too much upon the representations of naval officers and shipowners and too little upon those of persons who are practically connected with the business of the service, that is to say, of masters, mates, and seamen themselves. They complain, in general terms, of the many unnecessarily restrictive enactments, and of the many vexatious and annoying regulations to which they are compelled to submit, by the operation of the Mercantile Marine Act. Their petition is worded in very general terms; but, having had communication with the parties themselves, I believe I am in a position to explain to your Lordships what are the particular points in which they apprehend that the Act will affect them injuriously, I think, my Lords, that there is an admission on the part of the seamen of the mercantile marine generally, that the provision of this Act which treats of the examination which the masters and mates of our merchant service will have to undergo, and of their qualification, is a provision which was beneficially intended, and which, on the whole, is likely to work well. The petitioners, however, are apprehensive that it may be brought too rapidly and too suddenly into operation, and that it may bear very hardly on old masters and mates, who have been for 20 or 25 years in the service, and who are, not unnaturally, repugnant to the idea of being now liable to be examined in matters relating to their profession by persons whom they remember as having come to sea as boys, when they themselves were men. No doubt there is a regulation that persons so circumstanced may obtain certificates of "service," without undergoing an examination, but not a certificate of "competency;" but they complain that these certificates of service will not enable them to take charge of any ships belonging to the Government, or freighted with Government stores, or freighted with emigrants; and what they felt themselves especially aggrieved by, is this, that no restriction is imposed, and no examination required for foreign ships, which are now permitted to enter into competition with them, and to usurp the carrying trade. I do think that it is greatly to be desired that this matter should receive the serious attention of the Government, and that it should be taken into consideration whether it might not be practicable, without the least injury to the service, to extend some indulgence, so as not to compel them to undergo an examination, to old and experienced seamen, of whose competency there can be no question. With regard to the operation of the Act in other respects, the masters and seamen complain, firstly, of the ticket system, and, secondly, of the constant and unnecessary interference of Government officials, without whose intervention it is impossible for them to be either shipped or discharged. They also complain of the imposition of fees and of fines, and they are not entirely satisfied with the purposes to which the funds so raised are in all instances applied. They complain besides of that which is not immediately in the Act itself, but which arises out of it, namely, the power given by the Act to the Board of Trade to frame regulations binding on the seamen generally. With respect to the tickets, they were, no doubt, intended as a protection against the desertion of seamen in foreign ports; but experience has proved that for this purpose they are practically of no value whatever. No such protection has been afforded as was originally contemplated; on the contrary, desertions in the port of Quebec have greatly and lamentably increased, and the petitioners are given to understand that, in many other ports, desertions are now more numerous than they were ever known to have been at any former period. The tickets being compulsory, did not prevent desertion, but rather promoted it, for the men looked upon them as a device to impose an additional check and a more galling chain upon them, and they resisted them as conveying the idea of bondage. The sailor who deserted his vessel found it no difficult matter, either by fraud or forgery, or by some trumpery excuse, to obtain another registry ticket from the registering officer at a foreign port; while the sailor who had no intention of deserting his vessel, but accidentally lost his ticket, was obliged to pay a heavy fine to obtain another in its stead. The petitioners considered them especially objectionable on this account, that the oldest and the best seamen, and the youngest and the worst have their tickets in the same form and with the same character. It is, in fact, a mere designation and enumeration of them as of slaves and convicts. Now, to remedy this evil, they suggest that the application for a ticket should be made a voluntary act, and that a record of service and of character should be kept at the office. The ticket would then be regarded as an additional inducement to the deserving sailor, who would look upon it as a testimony of good conduct, and would be glad to have the number of his voyages inscribed on the face of it. As to the fees, the grievance on this subject is to be attributed rather to the manner in which the Act had been carried out, than to the provisions of the Act itself. At Liverpool there is but one shipping master, and the difficulty to the owner is very great in bringing his men separately to pass, and in keeping them after passing. The inconvenience, the annoyance, and the unnecessary expense which arises from having but one shipping master in so important a port, are certainly very great grievances. The fees paid in Liverpool alone average from 13,000l. to 14,000l. a year; and the total amount of the fees paid in the United Kingdom is 130,000l. The petitioners also object that the Board of Trade interposes in matters of minor detail where their interference is obnoxious and vexatious, and cannot possibly be productive of any good. Improve your mates and masters, and raise as much as possible the character of your commanders, and, above all things, give to all seamen, to master against men, and to men against master, the amplest opportunities of redress in your courts, both at homo and in the Colonies; but leave the maintenance of discipline on board men-of-war and merchantmen, in the main, during the voyage, in the hands of that person who is intrusted with the management of the ship, namely, the master. With respect to the application of the moneys derivable from fines and fees, this, I think, is a matter upon which it is essential that the most satisfactory information should be afforded to seamen. At present, I believe, the surplus of the fund so derived is applied to the maintenance of those institutions at our ports known as Sailors' Homes. I do not mean to say one word to the prejudice of these institutions so long as they are properly conducted. No doubt they were very good in their first origin. They were originally intended as refuges for seamen against the impositions and frauds of "crimps," and as long as they were self-supporting institutions, and were conducted with a benevolent purpose, so long they would work beneficially and were worthy of all commendation. But I certainly do think that when they lose their self-supporting character, and are maintained half by Government and half by contributions levied from the sailors themselves, it is a question which deserves to be attentively considered how far they are beneficial to seamen as a body, seamen having to contribute to their support. I say not one word to the prejudice of the individuals who were concerned in establishing the Sailors' Home at Liverpool, nor one word to the prejudice of those who superintend it. I am sure that they are actuated by the very best motives; but I am given to understand, that the institution, as at present conducted, is a superior class of boarding house, neither more nor less, and that it enters into competition with such houses in the town. Fourteen shillings a week is what the inmates have to pay; and as soon as a seaman is unable to afford that sum, he is turned into the streets, and is as much at the mercy of the "crimps" as ever. To the married sailors, I believe, the institution is of very little service, if of any at all. It is only of service to the single men, and to them only while they can afford to pay for it. Many of the seamen are domiciled at that port with their wives and families, and it is unfair that these men should be taxed for the benefit of those who are boarded in the Sailors' Homes—that nearly 7,000 men should be taxed for the benefit of 300. The petitioners also complain that there is a tendency on the part of the local marine board to favour those who are inmates of the Sailors' Home, and to give them peculiar facilities for obtaining employment. Without meaning to impute improper motives in any quarter, I must say I think there is much justice in the representation of the petitioners, that the managers of the Sailors' Home ought not to be one and the same with the local Marine Board, and that there ought to be a greater number of shipping masters in the port of Liverpool. The petitioners complain of the application of fines and fees to the maintenance of the Sailors' Home, and they make a suggestion which I think is worthy of all consideration, namely, that schools should be established with the money, either in Liverpool or on board of ships in that port, for the instruction of boys desirous of entering into the marine service; and they say that, if this were done, there is not a sailor in Liverpool who would not subscribe to the project. I believe I have now stated the principal points on which the petitioners feel themselves aggrieved. No doubt their complaints may be somewhat embittered in consequence of their experience of the ill effects of another act of general policy—the repeal of the navigation laws; but I will not mix that up with their present grievances. Their requests are not unreasonable—they are couched in respectful terms, and therefore they deserve the attention of Her Majesty's Government. It would be very satisfactory to these parties if your Lordships would appoint a Select Committee of this House, for the purpose of examining into the allegations of these petitioners, of hearing their complaints from their own lips, and from the masters; and the House would then not only obtain a real and practical view of their grievances, but of receiving suggestions which might so improve the Act as to make it productive of all the beneficial effects which its promoters anticipated from it. I do not intend to make any Motion on the subject; but I venture earnestly to recommend the prayer of these petitioners—reminding you that they received six thousand signatures in Liverpool—a number so near that of the whole body, as to amount to unanimity—to the serious consideration of Her Majesty's Government.

EARL GRANVILLE

entirely concurred with the noble Lord in the importance of the representations made by these petitioners, and thought that the difficulty which seamen must have experienced in offering objections to the Bill during its progress through Parliament constituted a sort of claim upon the Government to take their objections into consideration after the Act had been passed. At the same time it must be remembered that the difficulty which originally opposed itself to the stating of their case was quite as strong when their objections to the Act came to be stated; and he could not help thinking that some of these objections might be traced to persons who had profited by former abuses, and to a misapprehension of the operation of the Act. Many of the statements of the petitioners showed that they were labouring under a strange misapprehension of the grievances by which they fancied themselves oppressed. First of all, his noble Friend had stated that masters and mates of long standing were exposed to very great hardship, because they were debarred, unless they underwent an examination and obtained certificates of competency as well as of service, from employment in the service of Government in the conveyance of either stores or emigrants. The Government had felt that it could not make the examination compulsory upon them as it was upon younger seamen, and had therefore proposed to the Legislature that there should be given to them tickets of service instead of tickets of competency. That ticket enabled them to take the command of all other ships without any examination; and with regard to Government ships there would be no hardship, for the Government had for some time adopted the rule of refusing to employ masters who could not produce any examination certificate, even while the examination was altogether voluntary. With regard to the registry ticket, he had scarcely need to inform his noble Friend that it was not intended as a badge of degradation, but simply as an institution which might be useful in a case of public emergency, as in war. By the establishment of registration and shipping offices they secured a preference to good seamen and facilitated their identification. It might be a hardship for the good seaman to carry his ticket about him, and so to incur the danger of losing it, but it enabled him to identify himself whenever he was seeking for employment. As to the allegation that the shipping officers were too few for the number of seamen, he had only to say that in the port of Liverpool, although there was only one shipping officer, he had the power of appointing as many deputies as he pleased, and that his office was in the most central and convenient part of that town. The noble Lord then defended the objects to which the fee-fund was to be applied, but observed that it was useless to talk of the surplus of that fund until they had got it. As yet no surplus had accrued, at any rate within the port of Liverpool. With regard to the Sailors' Home at Liverpool, he must inform the House that only a very small portion of the local marine board at that port was connected with that institution. Out of the thirteen gentlemen who formed the Marine Board, only five were connected with the Sailors' Home. As to the regulations which had been published by the Board of Trade, the seamen were labouring under a very curious mistake. The regulations were voluntary, not compulsory, either upon the master or the crow. Great interest—he might even say dissatisfaction—had been excited by those regulations on the east coast of England; and, in consequence, they had been withdrawn by the Board of Trade almost immediately from the shipping offices on that coast. The Board had sent to the ports on the western coast—to Liverpool, for instance, and to Glasgow—and had offered to withdraw the regulations there also; but the Board was informed in reply, that a great proportion of the parties interested in them considered that the withdrawal of them would be unadvisable. If it were proposed to submit the subject to a Select Committee of their Lordships, he should be the last man in the House to oppose it. At the same time he must observe, that at that moment the excitement which had existed among the seamen was dying away, and the appointment of a Committee might revive it. Complaints of the operation of this Act were now coming in from the agitators of Sheffield and of Manchester; but he had hitherto been led to believe that neither of those places was a maritime town. He assured his noble Friend that all the points which he had raised that evening should be carefully considered by the Board of Trade; but at present it was not the intention of Her Majesty's Government to propose any important modifications in the Bill of last year, which had worked even better than had been anticipated. The Act might be modified in some minor particulars, but certainly not in its general principles.

The EARL of HARDWICKE

could assure the Government that his noble Friend (Lord Stanley) was influenced by no other motive than a desire to see the Act work beneficially. The period at which that Act had been brought forward and put into execution, was one of great excitement and difficulty. If it had been made law some time previously to the repeal of the navigation laws, he had no doubt it would have worked with perfect success; and it would have been such a preparation for those troubles and difficulties as would have been of infinite service to the mercantile marine of England. The subject of the examination of masters and mates was one which naturally roused considerable feeling on the part of the old masters of ships. It was not at all surprising that men of vast experience, who had always maintained a respectable character, who had made numerous voyages, and had always borne the highest reputation for trustworthiness and skill, should find it offensive rather than otherwise, to be compelled to undergo a minute examination before they could have a certificate that they were competent to command a ship. The noble Earl (Earl Granville) said, they could have a service certificate; but it was a well-known fact, that hardly a shipping house in Liverpool would employ any master or mate unless he could produce the certificate of competency. The noble Lord had also said a good deal about misapprehension; but he thought the noble Lord had himself misapprehended a good deal the character of the registry ticket. So far from its being a badge of distinction, it was more like the number suspended from the button-hole of a cabman, in order to identify him. If the noble Lord would make these tickets a badge of good behaviour, by directing masters to write "good," or "very good," at the back, they would become more acceptable to the seamen, and be more likely to answer the purpose for which they were designed. To be sure, if the indorsement was "bad," the man's chance of future employment was gone altogether. This registry was at first instituted solely for the purpose of enabling the Government to know, in case of sudden war, or any other national emergency, where good sailors might be obtained to man Her Majesty's ships, inasmuch as provision was already made by the 13th and 14th Vict., cap. 78, for all offences against discipline, and imposed very heavy penalties in the shape of various terms of imprisonment. With regard to the regulation of discipline on board our mercantile marine, he thought that the regulations of the Mercantile Marine Act were too minute. The small details which it was necessary to have observed on board of a man-of-war for military purposes, were irritating on board of a merchant ship, and created bad blood for no useful object. The noble Earl, after reading from the Act a long list of offences, involving the party guilty of them in various fines and terms of imprisonment, observed, that when you proceeded to examine into the competency of your commanders of mercantile vessels, and compelled them by such examination to gain a certain amount of knowledge, you fitted them for command, and might, therefore, leave them to regulate such details themselves. With regard to the number of desertions which were alleged to have taken place from British vessels in the port of Quebec, he had heard that desertions had been equally numerous at New Orleans and in the Gulf of Mexico. The possession of a ticket made no difference; for, if the deserter was a sharp, shrewd fellow, and could put on a good face, and could tell a good tale, he easily got over the loss of one ticket and procured another; whereas, if he was a blundering fellow, and incapable of making out a good case, the chances were that he was fined 10s, by the registering officer, even though he were an honest man, and had accidentally lost his ticket. For the registering officer was the sole judge in such cases, and that, too, on the evidence of the men themselves, whether they had really lost their tickets or not. He might, therefore, do an act of injustice occasionally, owing to the want of grounds ou which to form a correct judgment. The noble Lord seemed to think that the fees levied under this Act were not so excessive as his noble Friend (Lord Stanley) had represented; but there was evidence which rendered it easy to show how much would be received in Liverpool. In 1850 there were 404 ships which brought timber alone to that port. Reckoning these at an average of 500 tons each, that would give a total of 220,000 tons, which would yield 2,282l. The timber trade was certainly not one-sixth of the whole trade of Liverpool; but supposing it were, that would make a total of 13,000l. a year paid into the shipping offices of the port of Liverpool alone. This was too much to expend upon a large boarding house. Some of the money would be better laid out in the erection of schools for the education of seamen's children. The noble Earl concluded by stating the claims of the Dreadnought Hospital-ship at Greenwich to a part of these funds, inasmuch as the limited dues levied under an Act of Parliament, for the support of that noble institution, were insufficient, and it was necessary occasionally to appeal to the public on its behalf.

LORD WALDEGRAVE

described, at some length, the advantages of such institutions as the Sailors' Home, and defended the course taken in respect to that at Liverpool. He believed these institutions had been in existence twelve or fourteen years, and their tendency had been greatly to improve the morals and add to the comforts of the sailor on shore.

Petition to lie upon the table.

House adjourned till To-morrow.