170 TiMEHRI. 



difference is unreasonable or not, would be a question for 

 the court to decide. 



A ship is capable of carrying only a certain quantity of 

 goods, and in excess of this she could not transport her 

 cargo with freedom from danger, she would lack buoy- 

 ancy or floating power, and her stability would be affe6led. 

 In other words, she would be unseaworthy, her draught 

 of water would vary more or less with her proportions, 

 build, and type, and she might be loaded down to her 

 maximum load draught ; but the ship should carry her 

 full cargo so distributed in her hold, as to occupy the whole 

 of the available space therein. 



Take the case of a ship capable of cairying 350 tons, 

 tliat should be laden with 350 tons of goods, and pre- 

 suming that her hold has a space of 21,000 cubic feet, 

 the goods should take up the entire space ; in this case, 

 for every ton of goods, there is a space of 60 cubic feet, 

 and if for every ton of goods 60 cubic feet were engaged 

 the ship would be loaded thereby, but as has been 

 already shown, goods are of various densities, as an ex- 

 ample of which it may be observed, that some goods 

 only occupy 35 cubic feet more or less per ton, thus a 

 difficulty occurs in arriving at the due proportion of each 

 of the several kinds of cargo that would complete in the 

 whole the ship's carrying capacity. 



For example : — Suppose it is required to load a ship 

 of the tonnage and capacity we have stated with one kind 

 of dead weight and one kind of light weight, and 35 and 

 80 feet represented one ton of each, it is evident 

 that 50 tons of the dead weight would occupy only 

 12,250 feet and leave 8,750 feet unoccupied, while 

 on the other hand 350 tons of light freight would 



