466 Loss of Life at Sea. (October, 
stringent: thus they say—They “think that in analogy to 
the principle involved in the eleventh section of the Merchant 
Shipping Act Amendment, 1871, the ship-owner’s liability 
for damage to property or person should be unlimited in 
cases where the death of the seaman or the damage to 
person and property has been occasioned by the ship having 
been sent to sea in an unseaworthy condition, unless he 
proves that he—or those to whom he commits the manage- 
ment of his business—used all reasonable means to make 
and keep the vessel seaworthy. He should also, in these 
cases, be made liable, under Lord Campbell’s Act, to the 
family of the deceased seamen.” They ‘‘are also of 
opinion that any provision in a bill of lading or other 
agreement, having for its object or effect to avoid or limit 
the liability of the ship-owner in the cases just referred to, 
ought to have no legal validity.” They ‘think that the 
ship-owner should not be enabled to recover his insurances, 
whether under a time or voyage policy, when it could be 
shown that he or his agent had not done everything 
reasonably within their power to make and maintain the 
ship in a seaworthy condition, and that unseaworthiness 
occasioned the loss.” 
Fixing such grave responsibility upon the ship-owner 
makes it imperative on the Government to protect him 
against that growing spirit of insubordination, carelessness, 
and ignorance on the part of the crews. With this view 
the Commissioners recommend enactments and prosecution 
under them of captains, mates, or men, whose defaults have 
occasioned the loss of life or property, and they properly 
recommend—for the owner cannot be well made responsible 
for acts committed abroad to which he is not privy—that 
the eleventh section of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1871, 
should be amended, and be made expressly to extend to the 
master of the vessel; for it is very important to avoid any 
doubt that the master who, without justifiable excuse, leaves 
port with his vessel in an unseaworthy condition, renders 
himself amenable to the criminal law. 
The Commissioners justly attach great importance to in- 
stituting, in every case of disaster, a searching and impartial 
enquiry, to ascertain whether the casualty is owing to the 
faulty construction of the vessel, to bad stowage, to circum- 
stances connected with the navigation, to the incompetency 
of officer, or to the neglect or misconduct of the crew. 
No mere preventive or repressive measures can wholly 
meet the real difficulty which largely arises from a low 
moral standard amongst both seamen and officers, some of 
