Report of the Committee on Colour-Vision. 317 



positions as officers owing- to their being- discharged by the 

 owners. Whether they have gone to sea in the employ of less 

 particular companies, I cannot say. I can only state positively 

 that four of the twenty- two have not gone to sea. One of these 

 four is the case of Captain John Smith, whose case has been 

 brought prominently before the notice of Sir Baden Powell, who 

 wrote to Sir G. G. Stokes about the poor fellow. The letter 

 written by Capt. Smith, and published in the Shipping and 

 Mercantile Gazette and Lloyd's List, dated 13th August, 1889, 

 explains itself : — " On the 19th of June you were good enough to 

 insert in your valuable paper a letter written by me on colour- 

 blindness, and I am pleased to find that my letter and your 

 article commenting on same has attracted cousiderable interest, 

 notably by the Board of Trade. My object in again troubling 

 you is to impress upon the Board of Trade the necessity for a 

 more perfect means of testing" sight. I have lost my position as 

 chief officer in the employ of one of the best and most influential 

 firms in this port, in whose service I had been for a period of six 

 and a half years, and with a near prospect of command, through 

 not being able to conform to owners' rule and produce a colour 

 test certificate from their examiner, who, on the contrary, styled 

 me colour-blind. I, however, doubted the accuracy of the 

 report, and presented myself to an oculist, but found, alas ! 

 the Company's examiner's report too true. Now, I call this a 

 very paiDful case, after being thrice passed by the Board of 

 Trade for Second, First, and Master's Certificates. If the 

 Board of Trade examination on any of these occasions had 

 been true, I would have directed my energies towards another 

 way other than the sea to obtain my livelihood. I may say that 

 the defect in my vision has been, in the oculist's opinion, there 

 from birth. I am now, morally and conscientiously, incapable of 

 performing the duties of an officer on board ship at sea, though 

 my Certificate bears do endorsement of any kind by the Board of 

 Trade. Many owners I know do not require their officers to 

 pass the colour-blind test, being satisfied with the Board of Trade 

 Certificate. But I should think my case ought to be a warning 

 to shipowners not to place reliaDceon the present Board of Trade 

 test. My colour-blindness has destroyed my means of livelihood, 

 and I fearlessly say that the Government test of sight is to blame 

 for this. I am informed that I cannot claim compensation from 

 the Board of Trade, because they have not interfered with my 

 Certificate; but suppose I follow my avocation and get into 

 collision through my defect, what then ? and who would be to 

 blame ? I am a young man of thirty-three, and I have a wife 

 and family depending upon me, and my position at present is 

 very distressing. The best part of my life (Capt. Smith has been 

 at sea for twenty years) has been passed in useless toil. My 

 energies and prospects for the future have been unrewarded and 

 blighted through no fault of my own, but through the lax and 

 imperfect way in which I was examined and passed in sight by 



