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INVESTIGATIONS INTO WRECKS.

To the Editor of the "Nautical Magazine."

SIR, I have read with much interest the correspondence and the articles in the last number of the Nautical Magazine bearing on the subject of interference with ships and investigations into casualties; and although not a sailor by profession, I venture to trouble you with a few remarks; for these subjects, although professionally interesting to sailors, are also of great importance to the public by whom safety at sea is desired.

In the first place I agree entirely with what appears to me to be the main line of policy running throughout your leaders, that is to say, that the way to ensure safety is to fix the responsibility on the owner of the ship, and on those in charge of her and who are responsible for her; if it can be done. But my conclusion is that it cannot be done as fully and completely as the writers of your articles seem to believe. I think that the Government must, in the interest of all parties concerned, still retain the right of pronouncing a ship fit for carrying large numbers of passengers, because passengers in ships cannot know even so well as passengers on railways whether general preliminary safety has been attended to. And I cannot but think that the survey of a passenger ship, like the survey of the permanent way of a railway or tramway, must lead to safety. Nor do I see that such a preliminary survey need of necessity shift the responsibility from the owners of ships any more than it does from the owners of railways. As a member of the public I look with great disfavour on the enactment recently passed at the instance of the Board of Trade relieving large sea-going passenger steamers from examination when they only carry twelve passengers. The exemption may have been right if it had applied to tugs and river craft, but it is certainly wrong when applied to sea-going ships; and it always appeared to me that regardless of safety, or of any consideration, the Board of Trade carried that enactment as a sort of set-off or sop to steamship owners against Mr. Plimsoll's successful agitation, which has secured the detention of so many unseaworthy ships. If the Board of Trade, when they withdrew an inferior and therefore somewhat doubtful class of passenger ship from survey, had proposed an alternative measure of safety,

or had since in any way used any of their powers to ascertain and check dangers arising from deterioration of boilers and hulls, or from absence of safeguards in passenger steamers, the case would be different. To me it seems anything but satisfactory that a sea-going passenger steamer, because only carrying twelve passengers (and often of a lower class than steamers of the great lines, and therefore requiring more vigilance on the part of the police of the Government than the steamers of the great lines), should be withdrawn absolutely and completely from the surveyor's examination. And I learn on enquiry that a number of seagoing steamers, which once held passenger certificates from the Board of Trade, hold them no longer, and, moreover, that they could not now obtain them, owing to serious and dangerous deterioration; that these steamers continue to carry passengers ostensibly, but not really, under twelve in number; and that no effort of any sort is made by the authorities at Whitehall Gardens, or their local officers, to interfere in the interests of public safety. I do not know why this should be, unless it is that the Board of Trade, like your own leader writers, regard the survey of a ship as something to be avoided, and as being even a greater evil than loss of a few sailors lives. It seems to me, if such is the case, that it is riding a hobby a little too far, and indicates the mistake pointed out in the Premier's recent speech, which is the mistaking of "timidity" for "policy."

The Board of Trade possess large and wide powers enabling them to detain ships which are unsafe from any cause, but I have never heard that they interfere to prevent unsafe boilers, &c., from being used in steamers that do not carry more than twelve persons as passengers, nor that any steps have been taken in that matter, nor do I understand that the Board of Trade, who are really public prosecutors, have ever taken proceedings under Section 507 of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854 and Section 54 of the Act of 1862, referred to in your leader of December. It

[* We think our correspondent has not seen the lists of detained ships, because he would have discovered in it some detentions for defective boilers and machinery.—ED.]

is true and logical that they could not well proceed under those sections against a shipowner whose ship holds their own certificate, and this you have pointed out; but what I, as a member of the public, complain of is that the Board of Trade, having deliberately and intentionally withdrawn a large class of what are not the safest steamers from periodic inspection, have allowed those vessels to go to sea, voyage after voyage, as freely as if they were certified high-class steamers, with boilers brand-new of the best design and make. I must also take leave to point out that the Board would not, in the cases I am referring to, be finding fault with themselves, for they would not be proceeding against or interfering with steamers holding their imprimatur, but with steamers not holding it, and this in some cases because they are not fit to get it; and I do not therefore think that your excuse, urged on behalf of the apparent supineness of that Board for not proceeding, is applicable.

In the concluding paragraph of your article concerning the Princess Alice and Bywell Castle you state that the Wreck Commissioner's Court is improperly called a Board of Trade Court. Here, again, I think you are not accurate. I cannot fail to think that some good would arise out of a more free criticism in your columns and elsewhere of the decisions of the Wreck Commissioner's Court, but I do not see what good can come of your stating absolutely that it is not a Board of Trade Court, nor is this what the action of the Board of Trade proves. The Germans have followed the lead of this country in establishing Maritime Courts of Inquiry very much on the basis of the Wreck Commissioner's Court here, and their law, differing from the English, allows a Court of Appeal. In this country there is no appeal from the "Wreck Court" (and in this term I include, of course, the Justices of the Peace referred to by a correspondent in your last number), unless, through some action on the part of the Court, which may appear to the parties to be illegal, or outside the rules; and it is in consequence of an appeal of this sort that I am led to ask you to reconsider your own view that the Wreck Commissioner's Court is not a Board of Trade Court. I would refer you to the case of the Ayton, but am not able to say whether the Board of

Trade bore the expense of appeal in that case or not, but seeing that the Board's leading counsel was employed (and failed) to uphold the Wreck Commissioner's judgment, I can only assume that the Board found the money. The s.s. Ayton was stranded on the coast of Greece, on the 12th October, 1877, and having been got off, proceeded to London, where, on being examined in dry. dock, she was found to have sustained "no damage." The Board of Trade contended before the Wreck Commissioner that the master's certificate ought to be dealt with; and the Wreck Commissioner adopted the view of the Board of Trade, and suspended his certificate for six months. One very noticeable point in this case is that, whereas the vessel was not damaged in any way, the Wreck Commissioner's Court reported to the Board of Trade that "the loss of the said vessel Ayton was due to Mark Storey, her master," at least, that is the statement contained in the printed official copy of the report of the Wreck Commissioner furnished to the public. Counsel for the master urged that the Wreck Commissioner's Court was wrong in dealing with the master's certificate, as the vessel having sustained no damage, the Acts of Parliament gave the Court no such power, and the master appealed to the Queen's Bench division of the High Court of Justice, when Mr. Bowen, the counsel for the Board of Trade, took up the case. The Lord Chief Justice declared judgment against the view taken by the Board and adopted by the Wreck Commissioner; and in expressing concurrence in the judgment of the Lord Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Mellor used these words: "He (the Wreck Commissioner) is in the matter, as it appears to me, the servant of the Board of Trade to conduct the inquiry." And Mr. Justice Manisty said, "I am of the same opinion." In the circumstances of the case, and seeing that the Board of Trade has attempted to uphold the decision of the Wreck Commissioner on appeal, and that two judges of appeal regard the Wreck Commissioner as the "servant of the Board of Trade," I trust you will be able to modify your own views that the Wreck Commissioner's Court is not a Board of Trade Court. If you had said it ought not to be, and was not intended to have been such a Court, I should have agreed with you, but when you say it is not, I must ask you to

bear in mind that two judges of the Court of Appeal and the general instinct of the country think otherwise. I must apologize for the length of this letter, but the subject is of so much importance that I hope you will be able to find room for it in your very useful magazine.

Athenæum, December, 1878.

PATER.

[We are glad to receive and to insert our correspondent's able letter. We are in no way apologists of, or advocates for, the Board of Trade views, or for anybody's views but our own; and we certainly think that the "withdrawing from survey" of the steamers referred to in the first part of our correspondent's letter, is wise. We should, of course, if we were about to make a voyage, select a surveyed and certified steamship in preference to another. That is, however, a matter of discretion, which may be exercised by every member of the public, but is beside the question. As regards the second point, we have only to say that if our correspondent will refer to the public press of the 25th November, he will find a letter signed by Mr. Talbot, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in which that gentleman states that the "Court is entirely independent of the Board of Trade, and to call it a Board of Trade Court is a misnomer and is calculated to mislead. The function of the Board of Trade is to act as promoter of the inquiry, and to produce evidence and to raise the requisite issues." We can only say Mr. Talbot must know what are the functions and practice of the Board of Trade, and what is a misnomer as regards Courts of Inquiry better than ourselves, and this being the case we are content to quote Mr. Talbot's specific and public statement thereupon, by way of answer to our learned Correspondent.-ED.]

A CREW FOR 1500 TON SHIP IN WINTER.

To the Editor of the "Nautical Magazine."

SIR-I am an old shipmaster and believing in having a ship well manned especially in the winter months in the English Channel of all parts of the world where you never know how

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