Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/494

 consequently further ordered that the clerk to the Committee of Private Trade should within four weeks of the arrival of each ship collect from her journals, and from letters and other means of information brought before him, an account of all the ship's proceedings "to or towards any port or place, both outward and homeward, without or contrary to the Company's orders or instructions, and of all the ship's deviations from, or loitering in, the course of her voyage in the English Channel or elsewhere," and report the same in writing to the chairman or deputy chairman, and also to the Committees of Private Trade and Shipping. If satisfactory accounts were not given for these deviations, the solicitor to the Court was instructed to file a bill in the Court of Exchequer against the commander of the ship or other persons implicated.

But though deviations for any such purposes must have been difficult to trace, as so many excuses could be brought forward in the shape of contrary winds, stress of weather, sickness, loss of spars and sails, or the necessity of a fresh supply of water and provisions for the crew and passengers, the Court of Directors appear to have done everything in their power to discover the delinquents by still further resolving, that on the arrival of the Company's ships in the River Thames the clerk of the Committee of Private Trade was forthwith to give notice thereof to the Master Attendant or his assistant, or if they were otherwise previously employed, to the Surveyor of Shipping or his assistant, to proceed at once on board of the ship, and before any goods were delivered to carefully examine the state and condition of her