Shipping Wreck Statistics

SHIPPING: WRECK STATISTICS. About 1870, Samuel Plimsoll, a Member of Parliament, commenced an agitation against the overloading of ships and the sending to sea of unsea worthy ships. This agitation led to the appointment of a royal commission on unseaworthy ships. Important load-line legisla tion followed and the freeboard mark on British vessels is still known as the Plimsoll mark.

The 19th century was a period during which the British mer chant marine was rapidly growing numerically and in which at the same time sail was being replaced at first gradually and then more rapidly by steam. The royal commission on unseaworthy ships, in the introductory paragraph of their preliminary report in Sept. 1873, drew attention to the danger of statistical comparisons of wrecks "because with the employment of steamers a greater num ber of voyages may be made with fewer' vessels." In spite of considerable improvement in the quality and quantity of official statistics since Farrer's day, it is not yet possible to relate the number of wrecks to the number of voyages or the number of lives lost to the number of persons employed on such voyages and thus exposed to risk.

On the 31st Dec. 1829, there were 18,823 sailing vessels on the United Kingdom register aggregating 2,170,458 net tons. During I *Excluding losses of vessels by enemy action and losses of vessels due to mines. tExcluding losses due to mines. **Excluding vessels belonging to the Irish Free State.

The substitution of the intrinsically safer steam vessel for the sailing vessel has not only lowered the risk of loss to shipping as a whole but the loss among sailing vessels, as such few sailing vessels as remain are only very occasionally employed on the longer and more dangerous routes or at the more dangerous seasons.

The Hazards That Remain.

It remains true, however, that the occupation of the seaman is hazardous. That part of the Registrar General's decennial supplement for England and Wales 1921, dealing with occupational mortality, after pointing out the difficulty of preparing figures by which the mortality of seamen from all causes may be compared with the mortality of all oc cupied males, comes to the conclusion that the seaman's mortality from disease exceeds the average by 48.8% and his mortality from

violence by 43o%.

The loss of life among seamen and among passengers caused by wreck of or casualty to the vessel has, however, notably dimin ished in recent years.

The following table shows in five yearly periods the loss of life among passengers and members of the crew from these causes from 1871 to 1925.

that year, according to a parliamentary return, 1,305 sailing ves sels of 98,894 net tons were wrecked. This is 6.9% of the number and 4.6% of the tonnage. Sailing vessels employed in the long distance trades made only one or two voyages a year, and the smaller vessels employed in the shorter trades were frequently laid up for the winter months. During the four years 1826 to 1829, sailing vessels were totally lost or an average of 1,180 per year.

Safety through Steam.

Although 287 steam vessels of 29,501 net tons were already on the register in 1829 no record of losses of steam vessels appears to be given in the parliamentary papers of that year. The following table gives an imperfect indi cation of the increasing safety to the ship resulting from the sub stitution of sail by steam. It is of course an understatement as it makes no allowance for the fact that the distance travelled by the steam vessel in a year was three or four times greater than that travelled by the sailing vessel.

During 1926 only two passengers lost their lives from casualties to vessels in which they were travelling. The corresponding num bers for 1925 and 1924 were four and five respectively. These figures are much smaller than those relating to the pre-war periods.