Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/516

 tendency of inducing the charterer to insist on the vessels being laden up to the line of deepest immersion, and thus imperilling the safety of the ship; while the suggestion, from various instances, that there should be an elasticity in the law to be left to the discretion of the surveyor only shows the inexpediency of legislating either to secure freeboard in proportion to the depth of hold, or to provide some fixed percentage of spare buoyancy in every description of vessel."

Under all these circumstances, the Commission considered it desirable to leave the discretion as to the proper loading of his ship to the Shipowner himself, holding him responsible, as the law has ever done, for sending his ship to sea in an unseaworthy condition, instead of lessening his responsibility by transferring a duty, which properly rests on himself, to any official surveyor. But to render the responsibility of the Shipowner more complete, they recommended that a vertical scale of feet should be marked on each side of the vessel, and that, immediately before the time of her leaving or starting on her voyage, this measure should be entered in her log-book and should, wherever practicable, be left with the officer of Customs or with the British Consul, by whom the draught of water should also be recorded.

Having offered a few suggestions with regard to deck loads and other matters of minor importance, the Commissioners next investigated with great care the practicability of instituting a survey of all British merchant ships. In their opinion, the policy of having a Government survey for the purpose of securing