Shipwrecked passengers may be forwarded by public officers at the expense of the shipowner, &c.
Emigrant runners. stewards, and interpreters when required, and for the medical inspection of the crew as well as of the passengers. It extended, from forty-eight hours to ten days, the time within which a Shipowner may forward passengers who had not obtained passages in the ships for which they contracted. It required masters of ships putting back for the purpose of repairing damages, to maintain the passengers, or pay them subsistence money, until the ship is ready for sea or they are provided with passages in some other eligible ship. It further empowered the Secretary of State, Governor of a Colony, or British Consul, to defray the expenses of rescuing, and—if the master fails to do so—forwarding shipwrecked passengers, and constitutes such expenses a debt to the Crown, to be recovered from the owner, charterer, or master of the ship. The prohibition against acting as a passage-broker without a licence, which was formerly restricted to passages to North America, was now extended to passages to any place out of Europe, not being in the Mediterranean; and the amount of the passage-broker's annual bond was increased from 200l. to 500l. It empowered trustees of docks to pass bye-laws for regulating the landing and embarking of emigrants, and for licensing emigrant runners—who were for the first time brought under legal control by being compelled to take out an annual licence, and to wear a badge.
18 & 19 Vict. c. 119; 14 Aug. 1855. The Act of 1852 was repealed and amended by the Act of 1855, which is the chief Act now in force. It is in the main similar to the previous Act, but contains several additions, which are fully shown in the preceding memorandum. The principal of them relate—
1. To the reduction of the number of passengers required to
bring a ship within the operation of the Act.
2. To the reduction of the age of a "statute adult" from 14 to 12 years.
3. To the distinction between the upper and lower passenger deck.
4. To the increase of space allowed to passengers.
5. To certificates of exemption for mail steamers.
6. To appeals from the decision of an emigration officer who may decline to grant a clearing certificate.
7. To the stowage of cargo.
8. To the dietary scale for Australian voyages.
