Drawing the Line at Safety

The Zeebrugge ferry disaster has made current again the crucial question of freeboard. The safe height of a ship above water was a principal concern of Samuel Plimsoll the nineteenth-century reformer who has literally left his mark on the sides of ships the world over. Other questions arising from the operation of Channel ferries recall Plimsoll's anxieties about the danger of capsize from deck- loading and the shifting of bulk cargo in unsectioned holds.

Histories of nineteenth-century reform have made familiar the technical terms of such remedies as 'load-lines' and 'shifting boards' which stem from his agitation. Perhaps what has been obscured is the fundamental nature of Plimsoll's protest which certainly involved technical matters but was firmly directed against the negligence of some shipowners and the indifference of government. This deadly combination, as he regarded it, permitted a continual high loss of life among ship's crews at sea, a loss regarded by the Board of Trade as regrettable but unavoidable. Plimsoll insisted it could be avoided, or seriously reduced, with proper regulation.