The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1896-12-03
TIE pLlMSOLL MARX.
A Device TIsat Has Saved Hundreds OF
Lives ant Much Property.

ter front of large commercial city
and look closely at the big ocean
steamships and sailing ships moored
along tho wharfs, you will notice
that many of them have a white
circle and a lot of white lines maria
ed on their sides close to the water,
almost as if some bad boy had been
chalking 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-
tance in connection with the ships
on which you see them. If you
should notice moro closely, you
would soon discover that all the
ships belonging to Great Britain,
even the magnificent passenger
steamers, like the Lucania and leu
tonic, were marked with those queer
signs, and that ships of 10 other ma
ton had them. If you We're to ask
some sailor what the mark meant,
he would tell you briefly that it is
the Plimsoll mark, and you would
bono 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 tho 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
study of the subject and see if
such terrible tragedies were really
unavoidable. He was an indexible
Englishman named Plimsoll, and
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 waters edge, and this
overlooking seemed to be the worst
and most frequent fault.
Then he went back to parliament
and introduced n 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
its center. When this horizontal line
was down to the waters edge, no
more freight was to be put into
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 was not going to be downed.
He published book telling all he
had learned about the criminal over
loading of vessels and their wretch
ed 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 2S6 vessels were surveyed
and $50 of them found unseaworthy.
NV AOoou OAO IA ONCIJ UOh was lOuuu
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
I, trade and of parliament, and Plim-
soils mark became an established
feature on British seagoing ships,
but its 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 ono day for
being too blunt and violent in his
plain talk upon the subject. The re-
suit was tho merchant shipping act
AF