Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/554

 Shipping: and, though yielding for the moment to a popular cry, Mr. Disraeli may well have had reasonable doubts whether further legislation might not, so far from lessening, tend to increase those dangers and disasters which must ever attend the navigation of the ocean.

Having, however, officially announced his intention to review the whole subject, and to consider it in all its bearings, I venture to invite the attention of my readers to the more important points now pending. They are: a compulsory load-line, and the production of an official certificate of seaworthiness by all ships before they are cleared at the Custom House.

So far as regards the proposed compulsory load-line, a very competent and intelligent witness who gave his evidence before the Royal Commission on unseaworthy ships, says, "I think nothing could be more serviceable and nothing more excellent than to obtain and, if it were possible, enforce a load-line; but I also think there is nothing more impossible. A load-line, do what you may, is the opinion of an expert. How can you, by authority, enforce the opinion of an expert? I have had before me," he continues, "a great many proposals for ascertaining load-lines for ships. Some of them are very ingenious. By the best of them you may get, with considerable accuracy, the cubical displacement of the empty ship, the displacement of the cargo, and so you may arrive at the cubical space left in the ship available for floating. And getting that you get a valuable and useful fact for some objects. But the