THE PREVENTION OF WRECKS.* THIS book has made its appearance

at a most opportune moment. It is not, however, a piece of book-making, designed for the particular occasion which has brought its subject-matter pro- minently before the public. We are informed that it was begun some years ago, in order to help the writer, who is the Solicitor to the Board of Trade, in the performance of his official duties ; was suspended in 1879, in order to add a record of some of the appeals held under the Shipping Casualties Investigation Act, passed in that year; and has now been published with appeals incorporated which were heard as lately as the autumn of last year; and was in print before Mr. Chamberlain's recent proposals were put forward. It is essentially a legal handbook, and contains a complete statement of the complex legislation at home and in all British possessions aiming at the prevention of wrecks and other shipping casual- ties, so far as that object is sought to be attained through the medium of public inquiries and investigations into the causes of disasters which have already taken place. The history of the law, its present state, the cases which have occurred to illustrate it and the result of its working are set out with that colourless

• Wreck Inquiries; the Lau and Practice Relating to Formal Investigations, in the United Kingdom, Brttish Possessions, and before Naval Courts, into Shipping Casual.. lien By Welter Morton, Solicitor to the Board of Trade. London : Stevens and Sons. 1884.

impartiality and strict precision of statement which become a law book. For this very reason it is of great value at the pre- sent moment, as showing how far further legislation on the sub- ject is necessary or desirable, and what likelihood there is of any such legislation attaining the aid sought.

The general result which may be arrived at from reading the book is that every further step taken in legislation on the sub- ject has proved beneficial, but that for some reason or other the present law does not adequately secure all that it was intended to secure. The system of inquiry is of quite modern growth, dating, with most legislation which has for its object the pro- tection of the bulk of the work-a-day population, from an era subsequent to the Reform Bill of 1832. It owes its origin to the report of a Select Committee appointed in 1836 to inquire into the causes of the alarming number of shipwrecks then taking place. The list of causes stated by the Committee might, with a few exceptions, be assigned now ; but those exceptions are a significant commentary on the methods of legislation, and the influences at work on legislators then and now. "Among the various causes of shipwreck which appear susceptible of re- moval or diminution, the following appear to be the most frequent and the most generally admitted :—

Defective construction of ships.

2. Inadequacy of equipment.

3. Imperfect state of repair.

4. Improper or esoessive loading.

5. Inappropriateness of form.

6. Incompetency of master and officers.

The recommendations of the Committee lagged sadly behind their analysis of causes, being confined to a Court of Inquiry, with power to pronounce a verdict of censure on owners or com- manders, and to suspend the licences or certificates of guilty officers and seamen ; and the institution of examinations into the competency of officers. They found ten causes of dis- aster, five of which were almost entirely due to the conduct of employers, and only two of which were due to the con- duct of the employed ; but the object of their proposed in- quiry is to punish the employed with loss of livelihood, while in

no case can the owner suffer more than a verdict of censure. In 1839, another Committee recommended restrictions on deck- loading in the North-American timber trade. In 1843, a third Committee again returned to the charge, and recommended in- quiries into the conduct of officers and men. But if the recom- mendations of the Committees lagged sadly behind the necessities

of the case, legislation lagged sadly behind the recommendations of the Committees. It was not till 1846 that any action was taken, and then only in regard to the new and weak class of steam-shipowners, the Board of Trade being empowered to hold inquiries in cases of total loss or serious accident to steamers. In 1850, an examination system, under the Board of Trade, into the competency of officers was adopted, with power to the Board to suspend or cancel certificates in case of misconduct; and the system of inquiries before Local Marine Boards was inaugu- rated, and extended to sailing-vessels. Other Acts were passed relating to steamers and the conduct of seamen, but it was not till the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, that any general system was introduced. In consequence of the recommendations of another Select Committee in 1860 the Act of 1862 was passed. dealing chiefly with the constitution and methods to be adopted in the Courts of Inquiry. The chief changes were to give the power of punishment of officers to the Court, and in other respects to render the Courts more independent of the Board of Trade, and to extend the power to engineers. In fact, before 1867, a Legislature in which the dominant interest was that of employera, and which was not responsible to an electorate of the employed, directed its attention chiefly to the punishment of the employed.

There is no doubt, however, that the employed were in want of attention. The English master and man had become a byword throughout the world, as appears from the reports of Consuls, and Select Committees, for drunkenness, inefficiency, ignorance, and brutality. The repeal of the Navigation Acts in 1849, the institution of examinations of competency and of the system of inquiries, have resulted in a vast improvement amongst the personnel of the British Mercantile Marine, which, though sus- ceptible of considerable further improvement in sailing-vessels, has now in the main, and especially in steamships, attained a very high standard indeed. In other words, legislative inter- ference and the requirements of a certain standard of com- petency, the enforcement of responsibility by searching inquiries, and severe penalties in case of misbehaviour or neglect, have had

7. Drunkenness of officers and men.

8. Operationof marine insurance.

9. Want of harbours of refuge.

10. Imperfection of charts."

their natural result. The whole class of sailors has been im- proved, and the loss of life and property traceable to their con-

duct has been immensely diminished. This clearly appears from the figures quoted by Sir T. Farrar in 1875, whence it ap- pears that "for every 100 tons lost in 1833-5, there were 5,401 tons employed in the foreign trade ; in 1870-2, there were 8,529 so employed, whilst for every life lost in the former period there were 4,628 tons employed in foreign trade, and for every life lost in the latter period there were 13,831 tons so employed."

But it soon became obvious that all the causes of loss of life had not been dealt with merely by dealing with the delinquen- cies of subordinates, nor by bolding inquiries. These inquiries had undoubtedly done great good, by directing attention to the causes of disaster, and suggesting regulations and cautions, which were formulated by the Board of Trade and communicated to shipowners. But so long as the shipowner was subject only to a vague censure, there were no means of enforcing the use of even common care or common honesty, much less the use of the experience of the Board of Trade. The shipowner's civil liability was limited by law, and criminal liability was prac- tically unenforceable against him, nor was he even liable to pay the costs of inquiries the necessity for which arose from his default. Under these circumstances, a preventible loss of life went on till, in 1873 (the Reform Bill of 1867, which enfran- chised the employed in most branches of industry, having been passed in the interim) a Royal Commission sat to inquire into what should be done. It at once hit the blot, by pointing out that the Courts of Inquiry had "no power over the ship- owner, however culpable his conduct may have been." The inquiries "took the shape of a criminal proceeding against the captain, rather than a careful investigation into the cause of the disaster We attach great importance to instituting such a searching and impartial inquiry as may elicit the facts of the case, and may show whether the casualty is owing to the faulty construction of the vessel, to bad stowage, to circum- stances connected with the navigation, to the incompetency of officers, or to the neglect and misconduct of the crew." In con- sequence of this Report, thanks to the impetuous assistance of Mr. Plimsoll, the Act of 1876 was passed, which instituted the Courts of the Wreck Commissioner or the Stipendiary Magistrates, assisted by skilled Assessors, which now bold what is called a" formal investigation," and what is in fact an in- quisition of the severest type into the causes of disaster, and that not only in cases of proved casualty, but in cases of miss- ing ships. The Act of 1876 for the first time made the owner, as well as the master, criminally liable for sending a ship to sea in a state of nnseaworthiness. It also for almost the first time brought home to the owner the recognition of the fact that he had a responsibility towards his crew, as well as his crew to him. Bat, in regard to the immediate subject of the book before us, the most important change which it made as regards owners was to enable them to be made parties to the proceedings, and thereby liable for costa. Practically, the criminal liability of shipowners has not been enforced. It is rarely even in the case of masters and mates that it is enforced, though there is one case reported in which it was very properly enforced, the mate and captain sub- jected to heavy sentences, and the Court laid down the law in a way which would certainly meet the case of a culpable owner.

But the difficulty, of course, lies in bringing the act or omission of a shipowner which causes loss of life into such a connection with the loss as is immediate enough to satisfy a jury. There are, however, two cases abstracted in the "Official Caution" issued by the Board of Trade, which serve to show that owners are not always the wholly virtuous and praiseworthy persons that some of them would have us believe, and at the same time that it is at present very difficult, if not impossible really to punish them. For instance, the ' Marlborough ' sailed from Cardiff for Genoa, in November, 1879, with a cargo of coal, and has never been heard of since.

"The Court of Inquiry, in March, 1880, found,—(1), that the load. line was, not in a proper position ; (2), that the vessel was over- laden, with the knowledge and sanction of the owner ; (3), that she was undermanned, with his knowledge and sanction ; (4), that she had not sufficient stability for a winter or any voyage. No steps whatever seem to have been taken to calculate the stability of the vessel, the position of her metacentre, the centre of gravity, or to what extent she could be safely loaded. The Court condemned the reckless conduct of the owner in sending the vessel to sea in Bo un- seaworthy a condition, and they ordered him to pay [` oh, lame and impotent conclusion !j' 2250, nomine expensarum, or for ' costs.' "

Yet in this ship twenty-five lives were lost ; and if the owner had insured her heavily, as he very probably had, the fine of £250 was merely a small per-centage of his gain. Take another case. The Salopian ' was built in 1861. In September, 1880, she sailed from Lisbon, bound for Garston, with 400 tons of phosphate of lime. On October 17th, her mainmast and gear having been carried away, and leaking heavily, off the coast of Ireland, the master refused the assist- ance of a tug or to put into port on the application of the crew. A week later she was abandoned, the master and crew being rescued by a foreigner, and the master dying four days after- wards. The Court found that :—

" 1. She left Lisbon unseaworthy. Althongh built in 1841, the had never been opened out since 1867, and appears to have had no substantial repairs to her since 1876. While the vessel was at Tron, whence she sailed for Lisbon, several rotten places were found in her, and in fine weather she required frequent pumpings. 2. She was not in a condition to oarry her cargo with safety. The master, was not justified in refusing the services of the tag, and it was his duty to have availed himself of the opportunity of taking the vessel into port. The Court find that the master, as managing owner, was mainly responsible for the casualty, though some share of re- sponsibility must also rest with the other owners, for allowing the vessel to go to sea in the state in which she was."

We should think so. But no fine was imposed, and if one had been imposed, it would have been necessarily inadequate, com- pared with the gain on the insurance of a rotten old ship, which had never had any money spent on repairs, bat was probably insured as if it were new.

Take one last ease, that of the Yenikale,' abandoned in October, 1880, off Swansea, going from Shields to Gloucester, after the crew had been reduced for days to flour-and-water, and nearly drowned. The Court found :—

" 1. That she left Getle (her last port before Shields) in an un- seaworthl condition. 2. That her cargo was not properly stowed. 3. That she was overladen, having regard to her state and condi- tion, and the weakness of her bottom. 4. That there was not a sufficient supply of provisions put on board at Gefle ; that she was not properly repaired at Shields, and that she was in the same unsatisfactory condition when she proceeded on her voyage to Gloucester. The master's certificate was suspended. The Court also found the owner to blame for the casualty. They were convinced that he as well as the master was well aware of the unseaworthy condition of the vessel on leaving Shields, and they regarded the case as 'one of the most disgraceful that had ever come before them.' They therefore condemned the owner in the sum of £150 nomine expensarum,"

—a sum which would not seriously diminish the money saved by doing no repairs, even if the ship was only moderately insured.

These are cases in which, without an army of inspectors, or in the second case even with an army of inspectors; it would have been impossible to ascertain that the ship was unseaworthy and ought to be detained. But they are all cases in which obviously with a valued policy large gains might easily result from the loss of the ship, while, even if not so heavily insured as to make it an absolute temptation to lose her, money was obtainable by abstaining from necessary expenditure, and taking the chance of the voyage being performed successfully. If such cases occur often, and these are only three selected from the selected list published by the Board of Trade, it is perfectly obvious that the preventible causes of disaster arising from the conduct of owners arc not prevented by the present law. The least that could be done as regards insurances would be to prevent any money being receivable in cases where the Court of Inquiry imputes blame to the shipowner. It is abundantly clear that inquiries have done a great deal of good, and under the pro- visions of Mr. Chamberlain's Bill are capable of doing a great deal more, but that inquiries are not half as useful as they might be, while the law remains in its present state as regards the irresponsibility of shipowners, and their power of making a profit out of Insurances.