Plimsoll’s refusal to withdraw the unparliamentary word ‘villain’ saw his suspension from the House. The Merchant Shipping Acts Amendment Bill was withdrawn, but Disraeli had greatly misjudged the mood of the nation. Fanned by the popular press, packed public meetings were held throughout the country, to which ‘rotten shipowners were specially invited’.
Realizing his error, Disraeli trimmed his sails to the popular wind. The Unseaworthy Ships Bill, including the requirement that every ship should carry a conspicuous ‘Plimsoll Line’ on its hull, received its second reading on 30 July and became law on 10 August 1875.
As The Times remarked, ‘Mr Plimsoll has been King during the past fortnight and Mr Disraeli has been the humble henchman. The Prime Minister knew the power of sections of the House of Commons; he knew nothing of the strength of popular impulse.’
Despite this reverse, the ship-owners were once more successful in diluting the Merchant Shipping Bill (1876) consolidating into law Plimsoll’s temporary bill of the previous session. At once he introduced an amendment to force all British-registered ships to carry a certificate of seaworthiness before leaving port, despite Addersley’s protests that ‘A Board of Trade Survey will not encourage improvement and will have a mischievous effect upon British shipping in its competition with the shipping of other countries.’
Plimsoll pointed out the deficiencies in a loadline drawn by the shipowner without reference to anyone else. ‘There is no law saying he shall not paint it underwater and the idea is so derided by the ship-owners themselves that many of them in Liverpool have had it painted on the line of the deck. One Cardiff captain painted it humorously on the smoke stack of his steamer’s funnel.’
The Bill of 1876 duly became law, but it was to be another fourteen years before responsibility for the positioning of the Plimsoll Line was taken out of the hands of ship-owners and given to the Board of Trade. Meanwhile losses continued at a terrible rate — between 1879 and 1899, 1,153 ships went missing and 11,000 lives were lost.
Chapter 4
Having found his crew, Tom took the three men to the Customs House the next morning to sign the ship’s articles before the shipping master. Richard had not even told the Matthewses he was going to do so. Of the three, he was the only one who made a mark instead of signing his name.
Tom noticed the boy’s embarrassment. ‘There is no shame in it, lad. I was unlettered myself as a boy, but I taught myself to read and write and with a little help from me, you shall do the same. We have time enough. I warrant that, by the time we reach New South Wales, you’ll be signing your name with a flourish.’
He promised to give Richard some schooling on the voyage and arranged to take some books on board for the purpose. He also took prayer-books to sea to celebrate an Anglican service on board every Sunday.
When Richard went home that afternoon and told the Matthewses he had signed articles for the voyage, Mrs Matthews burst into tears. There was now no possibility of him withdrawing without risking imprisonment. ‘Well, Dick,’ she said, ‘if you are determined to go, I hope everything will be all right and, please God, you will come home again.’
They bought him a sea-chest and all the clothes and oilskins he would need for the voyage, but they could not hide the disquiet they felt.
Tom spent the remainder of Thursday, 15 May purchasing stores, ready to sail on the morning tide the next day, but by then Haines had been alarmed by gossip from Fay’s Yard about the state of the ship’s timbers, and told Tom he would not sail with him. Having signed articles, he was liable to arrest and imprisonment for desertion but instead Tom tried to reason with him, even offering him an extra pound a month to make the voyage. Nothing would persuade him to change his mind.
Once more Tom postponed his departure and returned to the docks and yacht agencies to find another crewman. He recruited Edwin Stephens as mate at the eight pounds a month he had been offering Haines, securing his agreement by promising him the captaincy of the Mignonette once they reached Sydney.
As Stephens was previously unknown to him, Tom made thorough enquiries about his character and background. A much taller and thinner man than Tom, Stephens was thirty-seven and married with five children. He was well regarded in the community, a devout Christian, and a member of the Above Bar Congregational Church, the YMCA and the Cape of Good Hope Masonic Lodge.
Stephens’s father, a master mariner like his son, had drowned at Cowes in April 1868, but his mother and sister were still living in Southampton, near his home at 73 Northumberland Road, Nicholls Town.
The Stephens family were relatively well off, for his father had been in well-paid, regular work, and as the only boy in a family with seven daughters, Edwin led a sheltered and somewhat spoilt childhood. Unlike Tom, he did not go to sea until he was three months short of his fourteenth birthday.
His father had worked for the Isle of Wight Steam Packet Company all his life, but his son joined the Peninsular and Orient Line. He began as a cabin boy but rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming an ordinary seaman within eighteen months and able seaman two years later. He obtained his second mate’s ticket in 1869 and joined the Union Line the same year, taking his first mate’s certificate twelve months later.
He was a very experienced deep-sea sailor, who had already been to the Cape several times. As he told Tom, ‘All my life I have been sailing to the southward.’ He could have looked forward to eventual promotion to captain with the Union Line, but for an incident in 1877 that blighted his career. It also caused Tom to pause before employing him. With such a small crew, he was dependent on the complete competence of each man to fulfil his duties.
In poor visibility, the 2,000-ton steamer, the European, had hit a reef and sunk while returning from the Cape with the mails, thirty passengers and seventy-six hands on board. Captain Ker was the company’s agent in South Africa and had little recent sea-going experience. Stephens was chief officer and navigating at the time. The last landfall had been Cape Finisterre, but low cloud and a sea-fret had stopped them from taking a sun-sight for two days. Navigating by dead reckoning, he set a north-easterly course across the Bay of Biscay, aiming to pass well clear of Ushant.
Early on the afternoon of 5 December they stopped to take soundings. Although the chart showed the depth at their estimated position to be 73 fathoms, no bottom was found with 100 fathoms of line. Since any depth of 100 fathoms or more is taken as being on the open sea, a safe distance from land, they steamed on to the north-east.
Three hours later they again tried and failed to take a sounding, but still pressed on, though the charts showed that Stephens’s estimate of the ship’s position had to be almost fifty miles wide of the mark. A further three hours later they found a bottom of shell and sand at 40 fathoms.
Ushant was still shrouded in fog, but Stephens and Ker decided they were ten miles north of it, even though the chart showed mud and silt, not shell and sand in that location, and a different depth.
Stephens had just gone off duty at the end of the second dog-watch, when the look-out cried out, ‘Light on the port bow.’
They put the helm hard to starboard and stopped engines. Then the look-out called, ‘Breakers ahead.’
The captain ordered full ahead in an effort to clear the rocks, but his ship was carried on to the Basse Meur rock. The light they had seen was the Ushant light. The passengers, hands and mails were all saved but the ship was lost.