Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/503

 unseaworthy ships. His resolution, requiring a compulsory load-line and the survey of all ships, was withdrawn.

The Government, however, spared no exertion to perfect the Shipping Code, which had twice been submitted to the consideration of Parliament; and having, during the recess, forwarded copies of it for approval and amendment to various Shipping and Seamen's Associations throughout the kingdom, they again introduced it on the opening of the Session of 1871, accompanied by a memorandum, calling attention to the alterations which had been made in the existing laws. The Bill, as re-introduced in 1871, besides providing for the transfer of the supervision of emigrant ships to the Board of Trade, which was carried out in the following year, contained clauses for the compulsory marking the draught of water on the stem and stern of every ship, for recording the draught, for making it a crime to send unseaworthy vessels to sea, and for enabling seamen, charged with desertion, to obtain, with even greater facility than they had hitherto done, a survey of the ships in which they had engaged to serve. Indeed, it went still further, and, for the first time, gave the Board of Trade alone the power of preventing any ship from proceeding to sea if, in the opinion of its officers, there were defects in her hull liable to render her unseaworthy: a further provision was very properly added to prevent an owner changing the name of his ship without the consent of the Board of Trade.