supreme difficulty remains untouched, viz., What ought the floating capacity to be? I cannot imagine it possible to enforce by any Government intervention a rule which must depend in every individual case upon the opinion of an expert."
Mr. W. J. Lamport and others. Such, also, was the purport of the evidence of the great majority, if not of all the witnesses examined before the Commission; but I quote that of Mr. Harper, because he is not merely thoroughly competent to offer an opinion on the subject, but is altogether disinterested. Indeed, from the appointment he holds, it would be to his interest to recommend a compulsory load-line, and he would no doubt have done so, had he not thought that any such legislative measure would be likely to aggravate the evils sought to be remedied. In fact, the whole tenor of the evidence is that a fixed load-line would do more harm than good.[1] And such was the opinion*
- ↑ See also evidence, W. J. Lamport, Question 5556, p. 192. With regard to the question of overloading, Mr. Lamport made a remarkable statement, which I do not hesitate to give at length, because it differs entirely from an opinion prevailing at present in the public mind. The Chairman asked (Question 556): "From your knowledge of the shipping in Liverpool during forty years, Do you think that there has been a great deal of overloading?"—"Since it was intimated to me that I was to be asked to give evidence in this room, I have been trying to task my memory for cases in which when vessels had foundered or had not been heard of, I myself had felt a reasonable suspicion that the cause was overloading. I have not been able to bring to my recollection a single instance of the kind. Now this result, I must confess, was a little startling to myself, and in order to check it I spoke to the overlooker of my firm, who is a man older than myself, who has had longer experience than I have had, and who, from his outdoor business, would probably hear of such things more frequently than I should. The overlooker told me that he himself did not remember a single instance, in which he had suspected that any vessel which had left the port of Liverpool had been lost because of being overloaded." I may add, from my intimate knowledge of Mr. Lamport, which
