The Pacific commercial advertiser., 1897-07-27
ORIGIN OF THE PLIMSOLL MARK.

If you ever walk around the water
front of large commercial city and
! look closely at the big ocean steam
ships and sailing ships moored along
| the wharves, you will notice that many
of them have a white circle and lot
OF white lines marked 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 marked just the same way,
those painted light colors having the
marks in black, you know that those
marks really mean something of i'm
portance 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
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 seafaring nation in
all the world.
twenty-five years ago it was no un-
common 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 cargoes |
and relatives of the passengers, would |
take it as something they must be pre-
pared to expect on account of the dan |
gers of the ocean. Finally, one man
determined to make study of the SUBJ
ject and see if such terrible tragedies
were really unavoidable. He was an
infleXible Englishman named Plimsoll,
and member of Parliament.
He spent day after day along the
docks watching ships loading and un-
loading, coming in and going out; he
talked with ship-owners, captains and
sailors. He saw ships sent to sea with
eaky bottoms, rotten spars, and worn
out rigging, with rusty boilers and rat
-le-trap engines. He saw them loaded
until even in the still waters of the
1arbor their upper decks were down to
he waters edge, and this overlooking
seemed to be the worst and most fire.
luent fault.
Then he went back to Parliament,
and introduced bill to put a mark
On the sides of ships to show how
deeply they could with safety be load
ed. The mark suggested was a circle
With a horizontal line through its CEN
er When this horizontal line was
lown to the waters edge, no more
freight was to be put into a vessel;
she was to be considered loaded. I'M
nediately Plimsoll brought down upon
himself the wrath of ship-owners,
While everybody else laughed at his
,ranky idea; but he was not going to :
,e downed. He published a book tell
ng all he had learned about the GRIM
nal overlooking of vessels, and their
condition when sent to sea-
At last he got vague sort of an act {
'assed, giving the Board of Trade pow
r to survey ships going to sea, and to {
top those which seemed to be unsea- l
worthy. This was in 1878, and during
he first nine months of the act 2S6 =
-essels were surveyed, and 256 of
hem found unseaworthy. At least one
n every 10 was found to be so dan
erously overloaded as to be in almost
sinking condition before leaving the
ock. OF course, this opened the eyes l
+ the Board Of Trade and of Parlia-
nent, and Plimsoll's mark became an
established feature on British sea-go-
ng ships.