The report of the Merchant Shipping Advisory Committee upon the
best means for ensuring safety of life at sea was published in Friday morning's papers. The most important of the recommendations in the report is that for the future the scale of lifeboat accommodation required by the Board of Trade shall be calculated not according to tonnage, but according to the number of persons carried, and that it shall be made compulsory for the lifeboats to be of sufficient capacity to accommodate every one on board. The committee also recommends the training of the whole crew for the pur- pose of manning the boats. Among other points contained in the report, we may mention that it emphatically condemns the proposed use of searchlights, but that it favours the pro- posal for compulsory wireless apparatus in all passenger vessels, with a continuous efficient service of operators. The committee makes it plain, however, that none of these pre- cautions is of so much importance as the improvement of the buoyancy of vessels in case of an accident.
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