Where He Intends to Load

The rubber soled canvas shoes that British schools have made children wear for gym for a century are called plimsolls, and they got the name by 1907, because the band of rubber joining the upper to the sole looked like the mark painted on the side of a ship. That mark is named after a Member of Parliament who was ordered out of the House of Commons in July 1875 for refusing to withdraw the word villains.

He had reason. The thing he was describing was a business model.

Ships worth more sunk

A ship in the 1870s could be insured for more than she was worth. Load her past what she could carry, skip the repairs, send her out short handed in winter, and the arithmetic pointed one way: if she came home the owner made a profit on the freight, and if she went down he made a profit on the policy. The ships that fitted this description were known as coffin ships.

The men aboard could see the state of a vessel as well as anyone. What they could not do was refuse to board her. A sailor who looked at a ship and declined to sail was prosecuted for desertion and sent to prison. An inspector of prisons reported that nine of the twelve prisoners in the jails of south west England were sailors, serving twelve weeks for refusing to go to sea in ships they judged unseaworthy.

Samuel Plimsoll, the member for Derby and a coal merchant by trade, started looking into this in 1870 and found it worse than he expected. A Royal Commission on unseaworthy ships was appointed in 1872. His book, Our Seamen, An Appeal, came out in 1873. The Commons did nothing much with either.

22 July 1875

On that afternoon Disraeli told the House that the government's merchant shipping bill would be dropped for the session. Plimsoll strode into the centre of the floor and said he was determined to unmask the villains who sent seamen to death and destruction. He stamped, and shook his fist at the members around him.

The Speaker told him the expression was altogether unparliamentary and asked him to withdraw it. Hansard records the answer. "I did, Sir, and I do not mean to withdraw it."

Disraeli moved that the honourable member for Derby be reprimanded for his violent and disorderly conduct. Other members intervened, pointing at the state he was in, and the matter was adjourned for a week to let him think about it. On his way out of the chamber he said: "Do you know that thousands are dying for this?"

He apologised when the week was up. By then it had stopped mattering what he had called anyone. The press and the public had taken his side, and on 10 August the government pushed through a stop-gap Act giving surveyors the power to hold an unseaworthy ship in port.

What the Act actually said

The full measure came the following year. Under the Merchant Shipping Act 1876, the owner of every British ship, before every voyage out of a United Kingdom port, had to mark on each side amidships a circular disc twelve inches across with a horizontal line eighteen inches long through its centre, painted white or yellow on a dark hull and black on a light one. The distances between the centre of that disc and each deck had to be given in writing to the customs officers, entered in the agreement with the crew, and written into the official log.

Then comes the clause the whole thing turns on. The centre of the disc was to indicate the maximum load line in salt water, in the Act's own words, "to which he intends to load the ship for that voyage."

He. The owner. Parliament had made the mark compulsory and left its height on the hull to the judgement of the man whose incentives had created the problem in the first place.

The Act was not nothing. It required grain cargoes to be carried in bags or barrels, or boarded in so they could not shift and capsize the ship, on a penalty of up to £300. It let the Board of Trade provisionally detain a ship it suspected and order a survey, with an appeal to a court of survey. Both saved lives. But the line, the thing the campaign had been about, was still the owner's to place.

Fourteen years

Lloyd's Register surveyors had spent years gathering data on how ships were built and how much they could stand. The Board of Trade turned it into load line tables in 1886. In 1890 the position of the mark was finally fixed by law rather than by the shipowner, and Lloyd's Register's freeboard tables were formally adopted in 1894, which is why some accounts date the change to then.

The mark now

The first international agreement came in 1930. The convention in force today was adopted on 5 April 1966 and took effect on 21 July 1968, with a protocol from 1988 that came into force in February 2000.

On a modern hull the disc is accompanied by a comb of short horizontal lines with letters beside them: TF, F, T, S, W, WNA. Fresh water is less buoyant than salt, so a ship loaded to her limit in a river sits lower than she would at sea and is allowed to load deeper before she gets there. Warm water is less dense than cold. The North Atlantic in winter is the worst sea a ship is likely to meet, so that line sits highest of all. The S, for summer, is the original mark.

In 1890, the year the height of that line stopped being his to choose, Plimsoll was photographed on the deck of a Mediterranean cargo steamer with its crew around him, his wife standing behind his chair and the ship's cat asleep on the boards.

Sources

• Hansard, "Parliament, Breach of Order (Mr. Plimsoll), HC Deb 22 July 1875" (the Speaker ruling the expression unparliamentary; Plimsoll's answer that he did use it and did not mean to withdraw it; Disraeli's motion at column 1825 that the member for Derby be reprimanded for violent and disorderly conduct; the adjournment for a week; and his parting question at column 1826 about thousands dying).
• The Lifeboat, journal of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 1876, "The Merchant Shipping Act, 1876" (the disc of twelve inches with an eighteen inch line through it, marked amidships in white or yellow on dark and black on light; the wording that the centre indicates the load line to which he intends to load the ship for that voyage; the written statements to customs and the entries in the crew agreement and official log; the grain cargo provision and its £300 penalty; and the Board of Trade's power of provisional detention with appeal to a court of survey).
• National Museums Liverpool, "Commemorating an MP's furious outburst on behalf of seafarers" (Disraeli deferring the bill; Plimsoll striding into the centre of the floor and declaring he would unmask the villains who sent seamen to death and destruction; the stop-gap Act of 10 August 1875 letting surveyors stop unseaworthy ships; and the fourteen further years before the Board of Trade regulated the position of the line).
• Royal Museums Greenwich, "Samuel Plimsoll and ship safety" (coffin ships and the effect of overloading and poor repair; the inspector of prisons reporting that nine of twelve prisoners in the jails of south west England were sailors serving twelve weeks for refusing to sail; Plimsoll beginning his investigation in 1870; and the Royal Commission on unseaworthy ships in 1872).
• Lloyd's Register Foundation Heritage and Education Centre, "What is the Plimsoll line?" (the 1876 Act leaving shipowners to decide where the line was painted; the Board of Trade load line tables of 1886 built on data from Lloyd's Register surveyors; the position being fixed by law in 1890; and the meanings of TF, F, T, S, W and WNA on the modern mark).
• International Maritime Organization, "International Convention on Load Lines" (the first international convention of 1930; the present convention adopted on 5 April 1966 and in force on 21 July 1968; and the 1988 Protocol in force on 3 February 2000).
• Online Etymology Dictionary, "Plimsoll" (Plimsoll's mark attested from 1876 and named for the member for Derby, and the rubber soled canvas shoe sense by 1907, from the band around the shoe resembling the line on a hull).