CHAP. IX.] ON UNSEAWORTHINESS OF SHIPS. 103 



April 25th, 1870. People must clearly know that illness is the cause 

 of my absence. Poor Carshalton has not seen me this spring. I hope 

 everything is properly attended to. 



Lilies are now in flower. The May is just coming into flower. Pear- 

 trees are beginning to go off. Plum-trees are mostly gone off. Peach-trees 

 are generally off. The vines are beginning in warm situations to sprout 

 (not in the vineyards). The spotted orchis is in flower. 



April 25th, 1870. The swallows are building. The buttercups and 

 tulips, all over the fields, red and yellow, are in flower. The white mulberry 

 is just breaking. The first leaf of spring is coming over the poplars and 

 elins. The underwood has much leaf. 



Before Mr. Plimsoll, to whom great praise is due, had the 

 courage to bring forward his Merchant Shipping Bill to the 

 notice of Parliament, there had appeared numerous anonymous 

 letters in the ( Insurance Times,' besides some pamphlets circulated 

 elsewhere, in which was shown in a very strong light the un- 

 seaworthiness of ships that were (according to these writings) 

 " sent to sea at the peril of men's lives." These letters and 

 pamphlets caused a good deal of excitement at the time among 

 persons interested, among owners of ships, underwriters, and 

 marine companies. Frequently half-a-dozen short pithy letters 

 would appear in the same paper on one day, followed up for some 

 weeks by others equally short and telling. Many of these letters 

 were from the pen of Alfred Srnee. There was a great grievance, 

 he conceived, to be remedied only by strong measures. In many 

 of his anonymous writings he writes as if he were himself a 

 sufferer ; but that form, it will be speedily seen, was merely used 

 as a figure of speech, so as to bring more forcibly forward the 

 grievance which he was endeavouring by agitation to redress. 

 The following spring Mr. Plimsoll brought forward his Mer- 

 chant Shipping Act, which my father thought erred only by 

 being " too lenient ;" and the remarks that gentleman uttered 

 in the House of Commons on the unseaworthiness of ships 

 sent to sea came, I have heard my father say, " far within 

 the mark : " yet the virtuous indignation with which Mr. 

 Plimsoll was assailed may still be remembered. But although 

 the Bill was lost that Session, the storm was fairly roused, and 

 the sailors were in a body with Plimsoll, and in 1876 the 

 Government deemed it expedient to pass an Act to stop unsea- 

 worthy ships being sent to sea. A selection from the various 

 anonymous letters from Alfred Smee's pen on the above subject 

 is placed in the Appendix, No. XXXII. It must be remem- 

 bered that these letters are not to be looked upon as specimens 



