Morris tribune., 1896-11-11
THE PLIMSOLL MARK.
A Device That Has Saved Hundreds Of
Lives and Much Property.

anu lOOK CLOSELY dG the dig ocean
steamships and sailing ships moored
along the wharfs, you will notice
that many of them have white
circle and a lot of white lines mark
ed on their sides, close to the water,
almost as if some bad boy had been
chalking a picture there of griddle
cake and a gridiron, but when you
find that hundreds of ships are mark
ed just the same way, those painted
light colors having the marks in
black, you know that those marks
really mean something of impor-
tanoe 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 leu
tonic, we're marked with those queer
signs, and that ships of no other ma
ton had them. If you were to ask
some sailor what the mark meant,
be would tell you briefly that it is
the Plimsoll mark, and you would
be no wiser than before-in fact, he
probably would not know much
more than that bare fact himself.
That ugly mark, however, is the
safeguard 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 20 years, only properly
used for the last 10 years, and is
still adopted by only one great sea-
faring nation in all the world.
Twenty five years ago it was no
uncommon thing for ships to go 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 car
goes and relatives of the passengers,
would take it as something they
must be prepared to expect on &C.
count of the dangers of the ocean.
Finally one man determined to make
a study of the subject and see if
such terrible tragedies we're really
unavoidable. He was an infexible
Englishman named Plimsoll, and a
member of parliament. He spent
day after day along the docks watch
ing ships loading ard unloading,
coming in and going out. He talked
with shipowners, captains and sail
ors. He saw ships sent to sea with
leaky bottoms, rotten spars and
wornout rigging, with rusty boilers
and rattletrap engines. He saw them
loaded until even in the still waters
of the harbor their upper decks were
down to the water s 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 mark
on the sides of ships to show how
deeply they could with safety be
loaded. The mark suggested was
circle with horizontal line through
it's center When this horizontal line
was down to the waters edge, no
more freight was to be put into a
vessel. She was to be considered
loaded. Immediately Mr.. Plimsoll
brought down upon himself the
wrath of shipowners, while every
body else laughed at his cranky idea,
but he YVES not going to be downed.
He published a book telling all he
had learned about the criminal over
loading of vessels and their wretch
cd condition when sent 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 unseaworthy. This was in 1873,
and during the first nine months of
the act 286 vessels were surveyed
and 256 of them found unseaworthy. |
At least one in every ten was found
to be so dangerously overloaded as
to be in almost sinking condition
before leaving the dock Of course
this opened the eyes of the board of
trade and of parliament, and Plim-
soils mark became an esta blished
feature on British seagoing ships,
but it's establishment was fought |
against by shipowners inch by inch.
1t was nicknamed the pancake
and ridiculed and treated with con-
tempt in every way. Some shipown-
ers put the mark on their smoke !
stacks in 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 re-
suit was the merchant shipping act |
of 1876, making the Plimsoll mark
compulsory on all British seagoing
vessels and requiring it's position to
be fixed, not by the shipowners, but
by the board of Observation-Disclosures