470 Loss of Life at Sea. (October, 
security ; any legislation on this matter would therefore be 
inexpedient.” 
We fear in too many cases the possible advantage of a 
double bottom in very remote cases, such as taking the 
ground, is made the justification of establishing a permanent 
danger of capsizing, as alluded to by the Commissioners, but 
further of effecting the danger it provides against, for the 
existence of an inner bottom leads to scamping the work on 
the outer, and reducing its strength far below that which it 
ought to be. 
This tendency to capsize was designed to be the normal 
condition, as we learn, of many of our vessels of war, and 
evidence has been given concerning some of them, that their 
outer bottoms were too weak to bear their own weight when 
grounded, and so they would not have taken a first-class, if 
any, certificate at Lloyd’s. 
We are glad to find the Commissioners recognising the 
danger of light bottoms, and of ill-adjusted deck-loads, and 
therefore inferentially condemning that system advocated by 
Messrs. Froude, Reed, and others, of giving ship’s little 
stability, not simply in the abstract, but actually contending 
that little stability was a prime element in safety, than which 
no system can be less well founded or more dangerous; but 
we think the Commissioners ought to have gone further, 
and, instead of saying that they “‘ could not give any universal 
rule for the safe loading of merchant vessels,” should have 
stated that the cardinal element in a ship’s safety and 
effectiveness is in great stability, and for this their centres 
of gravity, when loaded, should never be much above the 
centre of their immersed body. ‘This would dispose of the 
difficulties of low freeboard and water-line and deck-loads. 
The Canadian authorities except deck-loads of deal on the 
principle, reasonable enough, that they are light as compared 
with the other part of the cargo. Deck-loads of cotton and 
of deals even are dangerous when the general cargo is only 
cotton and light wood, for in such vessels it is nearly im- 
possible with such to get the centre of gravity low enough 
for safety. Nor is there any danger of uneasiness in recom- 
mending so low a centre of gravity in merchant ships, since 
their proportion of breadth—which is the disturbing and 
antagonistic element, so to speak, as respects motion—is 
small, and the tendency is to making it smaller, for the sake 
of greater cargo-carrying and small masts and small crews. 
The Commissioners have properly recommended that 
responsibility shall be shared out to all concerned in due 
proportion—captain, mates, crew, and owner,—but, while 
