Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/523

 in an unseaworthy condition, renders himself amenable to the criminal law."

The Commissioners very properly attached great importance to these inquiries, as affording the best means of ascertaining on whom the culpability rests; hence, they, incidentally, remark that, in comparing the accidents occurring at sea with those taking place on land, especially on railways, they were struck by the fact that, whereas, in the latter case, it is usual to prosecute those servants whose negligence has occasioned loss of life, there was scarcely a single instance of the prosecution of a master or mate, or of a man on the look-out or at the helm of a vessel, although cases have, undoubtedly, been numerous in which vessels have been lost either by the negligence of the master or of the crew.

They further recommend that the present system under which the certificate of a master or other officer is suspended, very frequently only for an error of judgment, should be entirely discontinued, and that neither the Court of Inquiry nor the Board of Trade should have the power of dealing with such certificates; but that, in cases to be provided for by express enactment, the tribunal alone before which the officer is tried should have the power of cancelling either all his certificates, or, at its discretion, his higher certificates, leaving him in these cases the chance of finding employment in a lower grade. *