INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SAFETY OF LIFE AT SEA. 



[Memorandum for the President.] 



Department of Commerce, 



Bureau of Navigation, 

 Washington, February 33, 19 14. 



The International Conference on Safety of Life at Sea was called by the British Gov- 

 ernment partly as a sequence of the desire among various nations to secure uniformity in 

 maritime regulations of merchant shipping in international trade, but chiefly in consequence 

 of the loss of the steamship Titanic on April 15, 1912. The maritime world generally was 

 impressed by that catastrophe with the need of international action. This opinion found its 

 first ofiicial expression in the joint resolution offered on April 17, 1912, in the House of Rep- 

 resentatives by the Hon. J. W. Alexander, of Missouri, proposing an international maritime 

 conference. 



The resolution was approved by the President on June 28, 1912. In the meantime the 

 subject of an international conference was under formal consideration by the British and 

 German Governments. On April 24 the German Ambassador at Washington advised the 

 State Department that the German Emperor proposed an international conference. After 

 some discussion through diplomatic channels it was finally agreed that the initiative in calling 

 the conference should be taken by the British Government. 



On the invitation of the British Government accredited representatives of the following 

 maritime nations met at the Foreign Office in London on November 12, 1913, at 11.30 a.m. : 

 Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan (not 

 present at first two sessions) , Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Russia, United States of 

 America, and of the following British self-governing Dominions: Australia, Canada, and 

 New Zealand, in all 17 delegations, Austria and Hungary being represented, however, each 

 independently, as well as through a representative of the Empire of Austria-Hungary. 



The conference consisted of 96 delegates and technical advisers, and of 18 secretaries, 

 of whom several were trained mariners. 



The membership of the conference included 34 government officers engaged in admin- 

 istering laws and regulations relating to the navigation, construction, equipment, inspection, 

 officers and crews of merchant vessels; 17 shipbuilders, naval and marine architects and 

 principal surveyors and engineers of classification societies ; 1 7 Members of Congress or for- 

 eign parliaments, diplomats, and admiralty lawyers; 10 shipowners; 6 experts in radio- 

 telegraphy; 3 hydrographers and meteorologists; 4 naval officers not classified above; and 

 5 of other occupations, including the heads of the American and British seamen's unions. 

 Of the total number, 31 to our knowledge were trained to seamanship from youth and have 

 followed the sea for many years, some being called directly from sea duty, like Capt. 

 Charles, of the stejmiship Lusitania, to take part in the conference, thence returning to sea. 

 Probably 40 members of the conference at one time or another had followed or now follow 

 the sea as an occupation, and there were few, if any, of the delegates without a knowledge 

 from observation and experience of the conditions and requirements of modem ocean steam 

 navigation. 



