18 



Bird Notes and News 



Oil-fuel has come to stay. There can 

 be little or no doubt about that. It is 

 constantly and increasingly in use by 

 vessels of every class, from the ships of 

 the Navy and the giant liners down to 

 the fishing-boat. One of the first essentials 

 of the Fleet, said Commander Eyres 

 Monsell in the House of Commons, is 

 that of oil-tanks all over the world where 

 our ships can replenish. The coal-strike 

 gave an impetus to a revolution already 

 in the making. There is, then, nothing to 

 hope from a change back to other fuel. 



What remedies are suggested ? 



In reply to a question asked (on 

 behalf of the R.S.P.B.) by Captain 

 Wedgwood Benn on May 8th, Mr, Amery, 

 representing the Admiralty, referred to 

 the Naval Regulations (17th February, 

 1922), which give various orders as to 

 dealing with leakage and overflow of 

 oil in H.M. ships, and direct that oily 

 ballast shall be discharged only whilst 

 oilers are en route between ports, and 

 that special care shall be taken to ensure 

 that oil and oily water is not discharged 

 in areas where it might do damage to 

 fisheries. 



The Board of Trade Oil in Navigable 

 Waters Bill provides penalties for the 

 discharge of oil within the three-miles 

 territorial limit, and lays down various 

 rules as to transfer of oil, etc., the word 

 " oil " to mean any liquid contained in 

 spaces used for the carriage of oil, and 

 to include spirit produced from oil and 

 oil mixed with water. 



Both these sets of regulations, however 

 excellent in themselves, are (unavoidably) 

 impotent to dispose of the characteristic 

 feature of the whole trouble. 



Oil, even heavy oil waste, floats upon 

 water ; it accumulates ; and it drifts, 

 even for hundreds of miles, with wind 

 and tide. Discharged even at the out- 

 side limit of territorial waters, there is no 

 safeguard against its subsequent appear- 

 ance in harbour or dock, on sands and 

 shingle. And if this safeguard were 

 possible, there would still remain steadily 

 growing accumulations of patches and 

 masses of the oily filth on ocean highways 

 and trade routes. To shuffle the nuisance 



off our own doorstep is but a partial 

 settlement of the problem. This point 

 was brought out by Lord Bearsted in 

 his letter to the Times (June 1st, 1922). 

 " There is," he writes, " nothing to 

 prevent oil discharged into the sea off 

 Calais being taken by the tide to Folke- 

 stone and Dover, and as in tidal harbours 

 ships go out at the top of the tide, their 

 discharge will be caught on the ebb 

 and inevitably travel to the British 

 coast." Lord Somerleyton has since ex- 

 plained that the object of the Bill is not 

 to drive ships to discharge their oil out- 

 side the three-miles limit, but to penalise 

 them if they discharge it within the 

 limit, and that the intention is to provide 

 barges or other receptacles into which to 

 pump it. But evidently he regards the 

 Bill as only a first step quickly taken to 

 mitigate the anxiety of our ports and 

 watering-places. 



Moreover, the trouble is not confined 

 to British coasts. The Nederlandsche 

 Vereeniging tot Bescherming van Vogels 

 has approached the Dutch Government 

 begging for measures to stop the pollution 

 of the sea, and has asked what regulations 

 are in force in England. Italy and other 

 seaboard countries of Europe find them- 

 selves face to face with the problem. 

 On the western side of the Atlantic 

 the situation is regarded as serious, and 

 the Zoological Society of New York 

 states on its protest that the oil is setting 

 up a fatal skin disease among birds. 



The obvious conclusion is that not 

 only is national action necessary to 

 prevent discharge into territorial waters, 

 but that international agreement must 

 be come to for preventing the formation 

 of floating accretions of oil on the high 

 seas. The nations cannot, so to speak, 

 sweep the oil into the middle of the ocean 

 and leave it there. They cannot destroy 

 it by fire, internally or afloat, to the 

 peril of the ship itself or of shipping. 

 Lord Bearsted thinks that treatment 

 in ports and harbours presents no 

 difficulty. Clearly, science must come 

 to the aid of legislation. Science found 

 a method of dealing with sewage and 

 making it useful in place of allowing it 



