The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1896-11-12
The Plimsoll rlark.
Device that Has Saved Hundreds of Lives and
Much Property.

Much properly.
If you ever walk around the water
front of large commercial city and look
closely at the big ocean steamships and
sailing ships moored along the wharves,
you will notice that many of them have a
white circle and lot of white lines mark
ed ON their sides close to the water, al
most as if some bad boy had been chalking
a picture there of a griddle- cake and a
gridiron; but when you find that hundreds
of ships are marked just the same way,
those painted light colors having the
marks in black, you know that those marks
really mean something of Importance in
connection with the ships on which you
see them. If you should notice more
closely you would soon discover that all
the ships belonging to Great Britain even
the magnificent passenger steamers like
the ''Lucania' and "Teutonic," were
marked with those queer signs, and that
ships of no other nation had them. If
you were to ask some sailor what the mark
meant he would tell you briefly that it is
the 'Plimsoll Mark, and you would be
no wiser than before; in fact, he probably
| bare fact himself
Hct ugly MAIN, IpNtNtI, is Ilt Sdlt-
guard to hundreds of vessels on the stormy
ocean, and to thousands of lives, and to
millions of dollars worth OF freight 1t
! has only been in use about twenty years,
only properly used for the last ten years.
and is still adopted by only one great sea-
| faring nation in ali the world.
| twenty-five years ago it was no I'M
common thing for ships to 90 out to sea
laden with valuable cargo and hopeful
| human beings, never to be seen or heard of
again. People on shore, even the owners
of the cargoes and relatives of the passen-
| gers, would take it as something they
must be prepared to expect on account OF
| the dangers OF the ocean. Finally, one
man determined to make study OF the
subject, and see if such terrible tragedies
were really unavoidable. He was an in
flexible Englishman, named Plimsoil, and
member OF Parliament. He spent day
after day along the docks watching ships
loading and unloading, coming in and 60
ing out; he talked with ship owners, cap
tains and sailors. He saw ships sent to
sea with leaky bottoms, rotten spars, and
worn-out rigging, with rusty boilers and
rattle-trap engines. He saw them loaded
until even in the still waters of the har-
Dor their upper decks were down to the
waters edge, and this overlooking seemed
to be the worst and most frequent fault
Then he went back to Parliament, and
introduced a bill to put a mark ON the
sides of ships to show how deeply they
could with safety be loaded. The mark
| suggested was a circle with a horizontal
| line through its center. When this hori-
zontal line was down to the water edge
no more freight was to be put into a yes
sci; she was to tie considered loaded. I'm
mediately Plimsoll brought down upon
himself the wrath of ship owners, while
everybody else laughed at his cranky
| idea; but he was not going to be downed.
He published book telling all he had
learned about the criminal overlooking of
| vessels, and their wretched condition
when out to sea.
At last he got vague sort of an act
passed, giving the Board of Trade power
to survey ships going to sea, and to stop
those which seemed to be upseaworthy
This was in 1878, and lring the first nine
months of the act 2S6 vessels were survey
ed, and 256 of them found unseaworthy
At least one in every ten was found to be
so dangerously overloaded as to be in al
most sinking condition before leaving
the dock. Of course, this opened the eyes
OF the Board of Trade and of Parliament,
and PlimsolFs mark became an establish
ed feature on British sea going ships; but
its establishment was fought against by
ship owners, inch by inch. 1t was nick
named the pancake and ridculed and
treated with contempt in every way
Some ship-owner put the mark on their
smoke stacks i'll defiance and derision.
Plimsoll held to his idea, however, even
getting himself suspended from the
House of Commons one day for being too
blunt and violent in his plain talk upon
the subject. The result was ''The Mer-
chant Shipping Act of 1861 making the
Plimsoll Mark compulsory on all British
sea going vessels, and requiring it's posi-
ton to be fixed, not by ship-owners, but
by the Board of Trade. Lieut.. John NJ
Ellicott, U. S. N, in the November st.
Nicholas.