Hot Springs weekly star. (Hot Springs, S.D.) 1892-1917, 1897-01-01
II PLlMsoLL MARK.
A Device that Has Saved Hundreds Of
Lives and Much Property.

Lives and Much Property.
If you ever walk around the water
front Of a large commercial city and
!ook closely ut the big ocean steamships
and sailing ships moored along the
wharves, you will notice that many of
them have a white circle and a lot Of
white lines marked on their sides close
to h water, almost as ii some bad boy
had been chalking u picture there OF n
grtddle-cake and II gridiron; but when
you find that hundreds Of ships are
marked just the same way, those paint
ed light colors having the marks in
black, you know that those marks real
ly mean something of Importance in
connection with the ships on which
you e them. If you should notice
more closely you would soon discover
that all the ships belonging to Great
Britain, ever the magnificent passcn-
ger 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 lie
would tell you briefly that 1t is the
"Plimsoll Mark" and you would he no
wiser than before; in fact, he probably
would not know much more than that
bare fact himself.
That ugly mark. however. is the safe
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 seafaring nation IN
all the world.
twenty-five years ago 1t was no l1l.
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 OH shore,
even the owners of the cargoes and rel
atives of the passengers, would tal;e
1t rs something they must be prepared
to expect on account of the dangers of
the ocean. Finally. one man deter
mined to make u study of the subject,
and see If such terrible tragedies were
really unavoidable. He was an III
flexible Englishman, named Plimsoll,
and a member of Parliament. He spent
day after day along the docks watch
Ing ships loading and unloading, COM
Ing in and going out; he talked with
ship-owners, captains, and sailors. He
saw ships sent to sea with leal.y bot,
toms, rotten spars, and worn-out rig
ging, with rusty boilers and rattle-trap
engines. He saw them loaded until
even in the still waters of the harbor
their upper decks We're down to the
waters edge, and this overloading
seemed to be the worst and most fire..
quent 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 n circle with a
horizontal line through it's center. When
this horizontal line was down to the
waters edge. no more freight was to
be put into the vessel; She was to h.
considered loaded. Immediately Plim-
soil brought down upon himself the
wrath of the ship-owners. while every
body else laughed at his cranky idea;
but lie was not going to be downai.
He published a book telling all he had
learned about the criminal Overlooking
of vessels. and their wretched condi-
ton when sent to sea.
AT last lie got n vague sort of an nc,
passed, giving the Board of Trade
power to survey ships going to sea,
and to stop those which seemed to be
u~nseaworthy. This was in 1873, and
during the first nine months of the act
2S6 vessels We're surveyed, and :..58 of
them found unseaworthy. At least one
in every ten was found to be so dam
gerously overloaded as to be in almost
a sinking condition before leaving the
dock. OF course. this opened the eyes
Of the Board of Trade and of Parlia-
ment, and PlimsolI's mark became All
established feature on British sea-,o-
ing ships; but it's establishment was
fought against by ship-owners, inch by
inch. 1t was nicknamed the ppm
take" and ridiculed and treated with
contempt in every way. Some ship
owners put the mark on tho.r smoke
stacks in defiance and derision. plim-
soil 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 1.-The
Merchant Shipping Act of 1876" max
ing the Plimsoll Mark compulsory on
all British seagoing vessels, and reQuir.
ing its position to be fixed, not 10y the
.ship-owners. but by the Board of Trade.
John NJ. Ellicott, U. S. N, in
ST. Nicholas.
Mortar.
The use of brick-dust mortar as a SUB
stitute for hydraulic cement is now rec