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Samuel Plimsoll, M.P.
(1824-1898)
 Samuel
Plimsoll brought about one of the greatest shipping revolutions ever known
by shocking the British nation into making reforms which have saved the
lives of countless seamen. By the mid-1800's, the overloading of English
ships had become a national problem. Plimsoll took up as a crusade the
plan of James Hall to require that vessels bear a load line marking
indicating when they were overloaded, hence ensuring the safety of crew
and cargo. His violent speeches aroused the House of Commons; his book, Our
Seamen, shocked the people at large into clamorous indignation. His
book also earned him the hatred of many ship owners
who set in train a
series of legal battles against Plimsoll. Through this adversity and
personal loss, Plimsoll clung doggedly to his facts. He fought to the
point of utter exhaustion until finally, in 1876, Parliament was forced to
pass the Unseaworthy Ships Bill into law, requiring that vessels bear the
load line freeboard marking. It was soon known as the "Plimsoll
Mark" and was eventually adopted by all maritime nations of the
world.
When the Plimsoll Club was established in 1967, its founders elected to
the name the Club after Samuel Plimsoll to honor his great contribution to
international trade and to identify the Club with the Plimsoll Mark,
thereby reminding all of his efforts on behalf of seamen everywhere.
The
Plimsoll Mark
The
Plimsoll Mark diagrammed above is for the starboard side of a vessel; on
the port side, the markings are reversed. The center of the disk is placed
at the middle of the loadline. The lines are one inch think.
The letters signify:
| LTF |
|
Lumber, Tropical, Fresh |
| LF |
|
Lumber, Fresh |
| LT |
|
Lumber, Tropical |
| LS |
|
Lumber, Summer |
| LW |
|
Lumber, Winter |
| LWNA |
|
Lumber, Winter, North Atlantic |
| LR |
|
Lloyds Register of Shipping |
|
| TF |
|
Tropical Fresh Water Mark |
| F |
|
Fresh Water Mark |
| T |
|
Tropical Load Line |
| S |
|
Summer Load Line |
| W |
|
Winter Load Line |
| WNA |
|
Winter Load Line, North Atlantic |
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From
an article on Samuel Plimsoll in an 1873 issue of Vanity Fair:
He
is not a clever man, he is a poor speaker and a feeble writer, but he has
a big good heart, and with the untutored utterings of that he has stirred
even the most indifferent. He has taken up a cause, not a popular cause
nor a powerful one -- only the cause of the British sailor who is sent to
sea in rotten vessels in order that ship-owners may thrive. He has written
a book about it -- a book jumbled together in the fashion of an insane
farrago, written without method and without art, but powerful and eloquent
beyond any work that has appeared for years because it is the simple
honest cry of a simple honest man. Also a man who is bold enough to tell
what he believes to be the truth, and it is still pleasing to many people
in these Islands to find that in any accessible form.
He has his reward. Any number of actions for libel have been commenced
against him, he has been forced to apologize in the House of Commons, and
were it not that he has found strong and passionate support among the
public, he would be a lost man. His crime indeed is great. He has declared
that there are men among the Merchants of England who prefer their own
profits to the lives of their servants, and who habitually sacrifice their
men to their money.
He has moreover averred that the labouring classes are the more part a
brave, high-souled, generous race who merit better treatment than to have
their highest qualities made the instruments of their destruction. He
tells of men who go to certain death rather than have their courage
impugned, of men who freely share their meager crust with companions in
poverty, and he claims sympathy and admiration for them although it is
well-known that they are ill-washed, uncouth and rude of speech.
Manifestly such a proceeding could only be the offspring of a distempered
brain, and so it has gone forth that the sailors' champion is "mad on
this question."
Moreover he is very fond of his wife, and continually mentions her as
having assisted in his work, which is another proof of madness. Whereupon
it is clear that no great attention need be paid to Plimsoll. He has
secured the inquiry he asked for however, and in due course of time we
shall learn from it that there never was a country where the humble
capitalist was so enslaved by the arrogant labourer as this, nor a trade
in which the labourer's arrogance was so strongly marked as in that which
has to do with ships.
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