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are already gaining the trade which the British Shipowners are being compelled to relinquish."[1]
Its extension undesirable. By the Merchant Shipping Act of 1873 (36 & 37 Vict. cap. 85), the Board of Trade are empowered, at their discretion, to detain any British vessel "which they have reason to believe is by the defective condition of her hull, equipment, or machinery, or by reason of overloading or improper loading, unfit to proceed to sea without serious danger to human life." By this Act, power is also
- ↑ I believe that there is much justice in these complaints. Indeed, it cannot be otherwise if official surveyors are honest and vigilant. For instance, some new danger or evil arises, and some new remedy is invented. Consequently, the surveyor says:—"I must provide for this," and he makes the requirement; the trade call for uniformity, and the specific thing required becomes a general stereotyped Board of Trade rule, checking further improvement, and making shipbuilders build down to it. On this point, my old friend, Mr. Alfred Holt, of Liverpool—and there is no one more competent to offer an opinion on such a subject—in a letter I had from him the other day, remarks with great force:—"The real objection to Government survey is this: no Government can insist on more than average standard of efficiency; but most of those ships of which the nation is proud are built to a much higher standard. Now, suppose two ships competing for freight, one of the high class I describe, and one of low type just sufficient to pass survey. Both have got certificates; these have blunted the discrimination of underwriters, so that premiums are alike on both, and, naturally enough, shippers send their goods by the one that asks least freight. Is it in human nature that the conscience of the good Shipowner will remain tender? He sees a vessel of much less strength, and not nigh so efficiently manned, go to sea, perhaps a foot deeper than his, earning the same rate of freight, and carrying a Government certificate of competency. Is he likely to keep up to his old standard? and won't he be compulsorily degraded to the other's level? All these surveys only help the bad, while they injure the good. I may say of ground tackle that, although since the Act passed, it has become difficult to get any very bad, it is equally difficult to get any really good. I believe, in my own case, that the cables I have got since the Act came into operation are worse than those I got before."
