Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/543

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Crown and had been allowed to get into the hands of private persons, were transferred to the Trinity House, provision being made for reducing the exorbitant tolls previously levied. By an Act of 1853, the expenditure of the Trinity House on lighthouses, and that of the Scotch and Irish lighthouse boards, was subjected to the control of the Board of Trade, and, since then, the reduction on the charges for lights, buoys, beacons, &c., has been fully 75 per cent. Nor has the question of Harbours of Refuge been overlooked; for, besides the construction of various national harbours, large sums of public money have been advanced at a low rate of interest for the improvement of local harbours, expressly for the benefit of merchant ships and seamen, and these, while facilitating commerce, have, in no small degree, tended to the safety of life and property.

Indeed, so anxious has Government been to rectify any shortcomings in legislation, which might tend to the loss of life, or inflict a hardship on seamen, that the Bill of Mr. Fortescue (now Lord Carlingford), passed in 1873, contained not merely clauses about "load-lines" and "clear sides," but a provision giving seamen a claim for compensation when, having been detained on a charge of desertion, the ship, upon survey, was shown to be unseaworthy. This Act further contains a provision, strengthening the power of the Board of Trade to detain unseaworthy ships, whereby that "Board are enabled to act of their own accord, and without complaint from without," the result of which has been that, up to the last return,