Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/636

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Bond from masters of foreign ships. prohibited from putting to sea again until effectually repaired. And bond is required to be given by masters of foreign ships carrying passengers to the British possessions abroad, that they will submit themselves to the jurisdiction of the colonial courts in the same manner as if they were British subjects.

15 & 16 Vict. c. 44; 30 June, 1852. By an Act passed in June, 1852, the two previous Acts of 1849 and 1851 were repealed, but their provisions were re-*enacted in a consolidated and amended form, with some alterations and additions. The following are the main differences introduced by the Act of 1852: It empowered the Emigration Commissioners to sue and be sued, by their secretary or one of themselves, and exempted them from personal liability in respect of all acts done in their official capacity. It forfeited "passenger ships" putting to sea without obtaining a clearing certificate from an emigration officer; it required ships taking additional passengers at outports to obtain a fresh clearance from the emigration officer; it punished, by fine or imprisonment, stowaways and their abettors; it required the survey of ships to be undertaken by two (instead of one, as in the previous Act) or more surveyors, and provided for an appeal against their decision; it required that single men should be berthed in a separate compartment in the fore-part of the ship; it provided for hospital accommodation and privies; it extended the boat scale, and required night-signals and fire-engines to be carried; it added to the articles expressly prohibited as cargo—horses, cattle, and lucifer-matches—and prohibited the carriage of cargo on passenger decks, unless stowed so as not to interfere with light and ventilation or the comfort of the emigrants. It fixed different lengths of voyage for steam- and sailing-vessels, and increased, from seventy to eighty days, the length of voyage to North America for ships sailing between the middle of October and the middle of January; in other respects, the prescribed length of voyage remained substantially the same as in the Act of 1852. It required that the provisions of the crew should not be inferior to those of the passengers, and empowered the emigration officers to reject bad provisions. The dietary scale (with the exception of substituting a small allowance of salt for molasses) was the same as in the Act of 1849, but a greater variety of articles was allowed to be substituted for oatmeal, rice, and potatoes. It required the provisions to be issued in a cooked state, and daily instead of twice a-week, as in the Act of 1849. It provided for the appointment of passengers'