6 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SAFETY OF LIFE AT SEA. 



The negative advantages of the establishment of international standards will 

 readily recur to anyone who has had occasion to observe the multitude of projects 

 relating to the mercantile marine which spring up within and outside of Congress 

 after any great event centering public interest on maritime affairs, such as the loss 

 of the S. S. Titanic or the brief cessation of ocean transportation upon the several 

 declarations of war in early Augtist. We owe to the press and to electrical com- 

 munication a heavy debt for prompt and wide dissemination of knowledge on any 

 subject at any time, but the rapidity of communication in these days gives to im- 

 mature or superficial projects, based often only on the desire for notoriety, a dan- 

 gerous currency not possible in stage-coach days. Of course, these observations ap- 

 ply to the other countries as well as to our own, for the files of the British Board 

 of Trade following the loss of the S. S. Titanic contain quite as many and quite as 

 foolish suggestions as those to be found in the department records at Washington. 

 The steadying effect of international standards on subjects relating to safety of life 

 at sea is insurance against thoughtless or harmful suggestions of legislation or 

 regulation and attempts to pervert public sentiment to the attainment of selfish ends. 



The limits of this paper and of my technical knowledge forbid a general review 

 of the provisions of the Convention. Usually they are stated so clearly in the 

 seventy pages of the document that review is unnecessary. It is worth noting, 

 however, that instead of the tonnage rule or the passanger rule for lifeboats the 

 Convention adopts the safe and sane rule that, as the length of the vessel is the 

 principal factor in determining the number of davits which may be erected, and as 

 the number of davits determines the number of lifeboats which may be launched 

 promptly, the lifeboat capacity shall be fixed in relation to the vessel's length. Of 

 course, lifeboats in excess of the total number of persons on board are not required 

 in any event. The Convention rules, if applied to the 5,647 transatlantic voyages 

 of passenger ships between the United States and Europe during 1912 and 1913, 

 would have provided lifeboats for all on board except in 392 cases, and in many of 

 these the operation of other provisions of the Convention would have brought pas- 

 sengers lists within the lifeboat rules. 



The provisions in Articles 33 and 34 for a continuous wireless watch on all 

 vessels equipped with radio apparatus, together with the requirement in Article 37 

 binding the master of every vessel to proceed to the assistance of a vessel in dis- 

 tress, constitute the broadest declaration ever made by maritime nations in statutory 

 form of the principle of the mutual obligation of those at sea to aid one another 

 when in distress. In the case of cargo boats or small passenger vessels doing little 

 commercial wireless business one operator evidently would suffice to send out dis- 

 tress calls in event of casualty imperiling those on board. The second operator or 

 watcher in the case of such vessels, however, is prescribed in the interest of safety 

 of those on board other vessels and is thus, in eft'ect, a tax upon the owners of such 

 vessels to insure the general safety of ocean navigation. 



The Convention applies to mechanically propelled ocean vessels (steam, motor 

 and internal-combustion engines) which carry more than twelve passengers, in for- 



