"COFFIN-SHIPS." 115 



on board to urge duty ( ! ) and that he then, when he saw me, ( rued badly that he had 

 not locked 'em up without talk, as then they wouldn't have been drowned/ '' 



Here Mr. Plimsoll indicates another risk for the poor sailor : " There is, I fear, great 

 reason to think that ships are occasionally lost from the very imperfect manner in 

 which some of them are built; in some cases, I think you will see that something 

 worse ought to be said. I do not say the cases are many ; still, they exist, and we have 

 done nothing to prevent it. The first time I introduced a bill to prevent overloading, 

 I alluded (mentioning no names) to the case of one ship-owner who, trading to the 

 West Indies for sugar (a good voyage, deep water, and plenty of sea room all the way) had, 

 out of a fleet of twenty-one vessels, lost no less than ten of them in less than three years. 



"After I had concluded my speech in moving the second reading, a member accosted 

 me in the lobby and said : ' Mr. Plimsoll, you were mistaken in that statement of 

 yours/ ' What statement?' I answered. 'Oh, that when you said a ship-owner had lost 

 ten ships in less than three years from overloading.' 'I mentioned no names,' I said. 

 * No, but I know who you meant. He is one of my constituents, and a very 

 respectable man indeed. It is not his fault ; it is the fault of the man who built his 

 ships, for one of them was surveyed in London and was found to be put together 

 with devils. He knew nothing about it, I assure you.' ' Devils ?' I said. ' Yes/ ' I 

 don't know what you mean/ ' Oh, devils are sham bolts, you know ; that is, when 

 they ought to be copper, the head and about an inch of the shaft are copper, and the 

 rest is iron/ 



" I have since found there are other and different sham bolts used, where 

 merely a bolthead (without any shaft at all) is driven in, and only as many real bolts 

 used as will keep the timbers in their places. Now these bolts are used to go through 

 the outside planking, the upright timber, not the inner planking (ceiling) of a ship, 

 and through the vertical or drooping part of a piece of iron called a knee, on the 

 upper part of which the deck-beams rest, and to which the deck-beams are also bolted 

 from above. These bolts, therefore, are from thirteen to eighteen inches in length." 



The following examples will speak for themselves. Mr. Plimsoll says: "On 

 the occasion of one of my visits to a port in the north, I was met by a gentleman who 

 knew what my errand there was likely to be, and he said, 'Oh, Mr. Plimsoll, you 

 should have been here yesterday : a vessel went down the river so deeply loaded, that 

 everybody who saw her expects to hear of her being lost. She was loaded under the 

 personal directions of her owner, and the captain himself said to me, " Isn't it shameful 

 to send men with families to sea in a vessel loaded like that ? " Poor fellow, it is much 

 if ever he reaches port/ Half a dozen others confirmed this statement. The captain 'was 

 greatly depressed in spirits,' and a friend not the owner, mark you ! gave him some 

 rockets 'in case of the worst/ Two men averred that they would not go if the owner 

 gave them the ship. 



"She was sent. The men Were some of them threatened, and one at least had a 

 promise of 10s. extra per month if he would go. As she went away, the police-boat 

 left her; the police had been on board to overawe the men with going. As the police- 

 boat left her side, two of the men, deciding that they would rather be taken to prison, 



