of the offence of desertion. In this Bill we have also a clause (334) which, for the first time in our legislation, requires every shipmaster to make an official record of the draught of water of the vessel under his charge when leaving port. And the Bill, when again introduced in 1870, repeated, with modifications still further in favour of seamen charged with desertion, their power to demand "impartial survey;" while it enables the officers of the Board of Trade to take and record the draught of water of any sea-going ship, and makes it a misdemeanour on the part of any shipowner who sends his ship to sea in an unseaworthy state, for which he may be criminally punished.
Mr. Samuel Plimsoll, M.P.
His first resolution, 1870.
It was in the Session of 1870 that Mr. Plimsoll[1]
first submitted his views to Parliament respecting
the loss of life and property at sea, by moving a
resolution calling in general terms for legislation on
this subject, as if no legislation had, up to that period,
been even attempted, still more carried out. I cannot
but commend the laudable objects he evidently
had in view, but, on that occasion, they were, so far
as I can judge from the Reports of 'Hansard,'
somewhat vaguely expressed. Nor did he even then
mention (as if ignoring or unaware of the fact) that,
in that very Session, Government had introduced the
stringent Bill to which I have just referred respecting
- ↑ Mr. Samuel Plimsoll was first returned to Parliament in December, 1868, as one of the members for the town of Derby, which he had unsuccessfully contested three years previously. In the 'Parliamentary Companion' he is described as a "coal-merchant," and author of various pamphlets on the coal trade, and on the 'Rights of Workmen,' and of a 'Plan to have Fatherless and Motherless Children cared for instead of being consigned to the Workhouse.'
