British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry
Day 36
Final Arguments
The Attorney-General:
My Lord, when we adjourned on Monday I was dealing with the steps which have been taken by the Board of Trade, and more particularly with the question which your Lordship put to me about what had been done by the Board of Trade. In this Enquiry no evidence has been given, certainly not in detail, of what had happened since the 15th April, when the news came. I think I ought to tell your Lordship, particularly as we are very anxious that you should understand this, that the only reason why no Rules have been published, at least laid before the House of Commons, is that in consequence of the disaster and this Enquiry it was thought that this was a matter which they ought not to publish Rules upon until they had your Lordship's report, not only out of respect to the Court but also in the desire that any Rules that they might make should embody any recommendations which have been made by this Court, and that they should put any suggestions which they could adopt into the Rules. It was thought right, and I do venture respectfully to submit that that was the proper view for the Board of Trade to have taken, that they should take no steps until after the Report had been made. But in order to secure the safety of the public as far as possible, what was done was, the owners of the various lines were seen or communicated with, and as a result the owners of all passenger vessels of over 1,500 tons, not 15,000 tons, as unfortunately appears in the Shorthand Note twice - I make that correction because it is very necessary - but all over 1,500 tons, have agreed at an early date, in fact, almost immediately after the disaster happened, to put boats on their vessels sufficient to accommodate all those on board. I refer to that for this reason; it indicates to you that the Board of Trade did secure the best boat accommodation immediately the disaster happened. Whether ships will in future have to provide accommodation for all those they carry is a question which is still, I think, open to some discussion, and upon which I do not venture to say anything, except that we shall follow out any recommendation that comes either from your Lordship or from the Committee which is dealing with the question of life-saving appliances. That is how the matter stands. I was anxious your Lordship should understand it exactly, so that it might not be thought that the Board of Trade had done nothing since the 15th April, whatever may be said in criticism of them before.
I ought perhaps, also to tell your Lordship that an International Conference is proposed to deal with life-saving appliances at sea, including, of course, boat accommodation. So that we may get some Regulations which will apply to vessels of all countries. As your Lordship will appreciate, it is of the utmost importance, particularly where there is competition; and keen competition, that there shall be an agreement between the countries if possible.
The Commissioner:
It is of the utmost importance that there should be an agreement between the different countries.
The Attorney-General:
Yes, and that is what the Board of Trade is now striving to obtain.
I have been carefully through all the evidence, including the evidence that has been given in answer to a number of suggestions which were made during the course of the Enquiry, and of which I make no complaint - on the contrary, I am very glad that we had the opportunity of meeting any such suggestions - suggestions that were made that the Board of Trade had in some way failed to take proper precautions either with regard to bulkheads or the loadline point, which your Lordship will remember, and with regard to some other matters with which they are charged. What I want to say with regard to it is this. I am not going to deal with them in detail, because I think it must be apparent - I am sure it is to your Lordship - that, as the result of all the investigation, no such charge can be made and no such charge is made, as I understand it, against the Board of Trade in respect of any of those matters. What has been said and what has been argued before you is that they ought to have taken precautions to provide a larger boat accommodation before this disaster happened; and that is the point, of course, to which I directed my observations last Monday. The only reason why I am making these remarks is that I do not want to take up your time unnecessarily in going through evidence dealing with various suggestions made throughout the case, and which have really eventually come to nothing. Unless there is something in your Lordship's mind that you would like me to deal with, I do not propose to deal with them.
The Commissioner:
I had better tell you my view at present about this matter.
The Attorney-General:
If you please.
The Commissioner:
I do not mean to bind my self, but I mention it in the presence of the gentlemen who appear, as it were, against the Board of Trade.
The Attorney-General:
Yes.
The Commissioner:
My own view, at present, is that the only complaint against the Board of Trade which has any substance is the complaint about the delay in altering the Rules of 1894 with reference to boats. I have not realised that there is any other complaint that the evidence really supports.
The Attorney-General:
If I may respectfully say so, that is the view I have formed after reading the evidence and taking into account the suggestions that have been made. I would just like to make some observations in answer to the complaint that has been made, or to the criticism that has been directed, to the Board of Trade, for not having increased the scale; that is to say, for not having made a scale with a higher gradation for vessels of over 10,000 tons, which is the substance of the complaint, as your Lordship says. I dealt with that to some extent last Monday, but I would draw your attention to this. The Board of Trade from 1894 onwards during the years which elapsed, the 20 years up to 1911, had, so far as practical experience was able to guide them, no reason to doubt that the precautions that they were providing -
The Commissioner:
That who were providing?
The Attorney-General:
The precautions that the Board of Trade were providing under their Regulations, and that the scale which was in force under their Regulations were sufficient, because your Lordship will have appreciated this - take, for example, the last ten years from 1902 to 1911 - that during those ten years there had been over 6,000,000 passengers carried, and a large number of them, of course, carried in larger vessels than had existed at any rate before 1904. 1903-4 marks the stage at which vessels of much larger tonnage were constructed.
The Commissioner:
When you say carried, are you confining your observations to the Atlantic trade?
The Attorney-General:
Yes.
The Commissioner:
I thought so, because there must have been an enormous number, a much larger number, carried over the surface of the globe.
The Attorney-General:
Yes.
The Commissioner:
To which these Rules apply.
The Attorney-General:
I quite appreciate that.
The Commissioner:
These Rules are not confined to the Atlantic?
The Attorney-General:
No, but we have only the figures of the North Atlantic. The only figures we have are for the voyages on this route; that is why I am referring to them. They are very, very significant I submit. During those 10 years, of the 6,000,000 passengers carried, more than half of them (we do not exactly know the number or the proportion.) were carried in vessels which belonged to the United Kingdom.
The Commissioner:
What do you mean by that?
The Attorney-General:
All the vessels that were carrying the passengers, of course, were not British vessels; the 6,000,000 includes all the passengers carried to and fro. Your Lordship asked the question as to whether it was possible to separate the number of passengers into those carried in British vessels and those carried in other vessels, but the figures are not available for doing that, and we have not been able to get them, and the result is we have to take it in this way, that over 6,000,000 passengers were carried during those ten years, that is the last ten years, and that more than half of them, and considerably more than half, were carried in British vessels. We do know the number of lives lost in British vessels, and that is nine during those ten years. That is the point I wanted to bring to your Lordship's attention.
That really means this, whether they were right or wrong in the view that they took, that it was much more important that they should have a construction of vessels - I think I am entitled to say the vessels themselves forming lifeboats - that it was much more important that they should have vessels constructed with efficient watertight compartments (although I agree they have no power to enforce it; I am going to call attention to that in a moment.) than that they should have a larger provision of boats. Again, the view which they took, whether right or wrong - certainly the view that Sir Alfred Chalmers took, who was at the head for so many years - was that it was not possible to have a larger number of boats without interfering with the vessel, without hampering her decks, and without, at any rate, providing boats which he thought it would be very difficult to launch. Whether he was right or wrong in that, certainly the result is this, that very few lives were lost, and the importance of it is, that fewer lives were lost during that ten years than in the preceding ten years. In the preceding ten years, your Lordship will remember, the figures that were given corresponding to the figures that I gave just now, were three and a half millions, and during those ten years the total number of passengers lost was 73.
The Commissioner:
Those figures are all set out in Sir Robert Finlay's speech.
The Attorney-General:
Yes, they are taken from the evidence.
The Commissioner:
He used them for the purpose of showing how negatively good the system of steaming ahead without taking into account the possibility of there being ice on the track had been.
The Attorney-General:
And there is, of course, this observation to be made with regard to both arguments, with regard to the purpose for which he used them, and the purpose for which I am using them, that these arguments stand very well until you get a disaster of this character. Then, no doubt, you have got totally different considerations to apply, and the only use I am intending to make of it is not to say it is unnecessary to provide for their boat accommodation in the future, but I am putting it before you for your Lordship's consideration, as, at least, evidence which justified the Board of Trade, if it had been right in its opinion upon the material which it hitherto had had, in coming to the conclusion that further boat accommodation was not necessary in vessels of 10,000 tons. That is all I want to say about it.
The Commissioner:
I think you are also entitled to say this, that they knew that, Rules or no Rules, these big liners were provided with boats far in excess of the requirements of their own Rules.
The Attorney-General:
Yes. Wherever you are dealing with these big liners undoubtedly they did, as is shown from the Tables and considerably in excess. Undoubtedly these vessels did, trading as they were, and carrying as did the "Olympic," for example, a boat accommodation, which, I think I am right in saying was equivalent to 53 percent of the number of persons carried on the ship. She carried boat accommodation for 1,178 persons, and according to the Board of Trade Regulations she would have had to carry accommodation for 962, or 9,625 cubic feet, as against 11,325 cubic feet which she did carry.
There is this observation to be made, which I am sure is present to your Lordship's mind, that in fact the accommodation for 1,178 persons on this particular voyage in this disaster was not even used; I mean to say the full capacity of it, although available, was not used by those on board the "Titanic." All that you have is that 711 persons were saved out of the total number that could have been saved, according to the capacity of the boats and assuming that the last collapsible was launched, namely, 1,178.
I only use that for the purpose of showing this, that even with the comparatively large boat accommodation that there was of 53 percent of the persons carried, nothing like that number of persons were in fact saved; and that even if you had had a larger accommodation it is very doubtful (I do not want to put it too high.) whether you would have saved any more persons. I mean by that, that according to the evidence which has been given in this case, it is said that you could not get women and children to step into the boats, a large number of women and children were still on the ship and were not saved. And supposing you had had double the number of boats, it is very doubtful whether you would have had any more persons saved. Again, I am not using that for the purpose of saying that you should not have boats in the future. I am only using it in order to see what the result would have been if more boats had been provided on the "Titanic," that is all, as applied to this particular disaster, and not as intending in any way to relieve shipowners from having to provide more boats in future.
Those are reflections which, I think, one is bound to make, because naturally if you have in mind that more boats might have been provided, either by the Board of Trade Regulations, or by the shipowners themselves, in view of suggestions that were made to them, one must see, as far as one can, what the effect would have been if they had been provided. I know the evidence is so present to your Lordship's mind upon this that I am not going to dwell in detail upon it.
One has further to bear in mind this, that on this particular occasion the weather was extraordinarily favourable for the launching of boats; you might never get such an occasion again. If an accident happens, and if there is a collision, it is almost more than one could possibly expect that you would have an absolutely calm sea such as you had on this night; no wind, and even no swell, and that you could lower boats from the height of the davits of 65 feet above the water level. You do require a vessel to be very steady, and you require very good weather to be able to do that.
The Commissioner:
I thought the boat deck was about 90 feet above the water.
The Attorney-General:
95 feet from the keel, but 65 feet from the waterline. I think I am right in that.
The Commissioner:
There is one matter that is quite beside the point, but I want to mention it now because my attention has been drawn to it, and you have just stated a point which makes it applicable at this time. You were talking about the women and children. I do not know whether, in providing lifebelts, any lifebelts are made specially for children, because I am told that the lifebelts which are made for adults are not really available for children. I only mention it; but if it is so, I think the attention of shipowners ought to be directed to it, so that it will be necessary that they should have some lifebelts on board which could be used by small children.
The Attorney-General:
Yes, my Lord.
The Commissioner:
I only mention it.
The Attorney-General:
Again, I think one must remember the very considerable difficulty that there would be in a vessel in lowering boats from both sides. Certainly in a heavy sea you could only lower boats on one side, as we know; it would be useless to attempt to lower them on the weather side; you could not do that, you could only lower them on the lee-side. So that if you had the full boat accommodation, still the great probability is in the event of your requiring them you could only use the one side.
The Commissioner:
And I suppose if the ship has a list.
The Attorney-General:
Yes, I was going to say in a list, again, you can only lower on the one side.
Then there is the further difficulty which has been much discussed in this case, of finding a place for them. It is not for me to express an opinion on that; it is a matter for your Lordship as to whether there was more room on the "Titanic," more space available for boats. All I will venture to say with regard to it is, that certainly, according to the evidence, it does seem that more boats could have been placed on the deck. I do not profess to be an expert upon it.
The Commissioner:
More boats could have been placed there - there is no doubt about that - because they have placed them since on the "Olympic."
The Attorney-General:
Yes, but, as I saw them placed - I do not know whether the same idea occurred to you when you saw them - they would have a very great difficulty in using all those boats on that deck if the occasion arose.
The Commissioner:
And it may be the further provision of boats would be quite useless - very likely it would be - but I am sure of this, that at present you will not get the public to travel upon a boat that has not got what the public thinks is a sufficient supply of lifeboats.
The Attorney-General:
No, and certainly, I think the result of the evidence which has been given in this case so far as I am able to form an opinion upon it - I put it forward with diffidence, having regard to the presence of those who are much more able to speak upon this matter with authority than I - is that it does seem that more boats could with safety have been carried, and placed under davits on the vessel.
The Commissioner:
I have had sent to me an advertisement of a line of steamers which contains one line: "Lifeboats carried sufficient for all passengers and crew."
The Attorney-General:
No doubt, for a time those advertisements may have some effect. As we know, eventually the public forgets all about them, and we get back to the old state of things, so that some Regulations have to be made.
There are, no doubt, many considerations of that character which must naturally affect the minds of those who have to determine whether or not there should be boat accommodation for all. I propose to leave that part of the subject now; I have dealt with it so far as it is material to this Enquiry, and it is useless, as it seems to me, to examine all the suggestions that have been made, and the objections to them, again.
The Commissioner:
Fishing boats, I suppose, carry boats, but do they carry lifeboats?
The Attorney-General:
Not lifeboats, but boats, I think.
The Commissioner:
Not lifeboats?
The Attorney-General:
No; boats. It is very difficult to say that boats should be carried for all persons on board, for instance, on excursion steamers. There are all those matters to be considered. Your Lordship will remember in the provisions as to boats there are a series of classes of vessels dealt with which gives you a very good idea of the difficulties that there necessarily must be in prescribing what is to happen with regard to all vessels. You first of all have got steamships carrying emigrant passengers. They come under the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act so far as they go. In that connection you have also got the foreign-going steamships which have passenger certificates under the Act, which do not carry emigrants. That is a second class. Then you have steamships which have passenger certificates carrying passengers anywhere within the home trade limits, as defined, as your Lordship will remember, under the Merchant Shipping Act, between places in the United Kingdom and ports in Europe, between the River Elbe and Brest. Then you have foreign-going steamers which are not certified to carry passengers. Those are easily dealt with because they have ample accommodation there and your Lordship will remember so easy is it that in some of these vessels you have got the accommodation provided on each side sufficient to carry the whole of the passengers on board the vessel, which are the crew. But you can only do that, of course, when you are dealing with a foreign-going vessel which is not carrying passengers at all.
The Commissioner:
I have forgotten what I have been told about Channel steamers going to Calais and Boulogne. Do they carry lifeboats sufficient to carry all the people?
The Attorney-General:
No, they certainly do not. That is what I was thinking of at the moment.
The Commissioner:
I came across at the end of March, I think it was; we were packed like pigs almost, I am sure there were not sufficient lifeboats then.
The Attorney-General:
No.
The Commissioner:
But I did not trouble my head about it.
The Attorney-General:
I will not trouble you to go through it, but merely give an indication of the kind of provisions that would have to be made, necessarily for the different classes of vessels. In this case, and applying the test to this disaster; what happened on the "Titanic," the fact must always remain in the end that there was the strongest disinclination on the part of the majority of persons on board the "Titanic" to leave that great big ship for the very small boat into which they were asked to enter. Whether it is reasonable or not it is useless to enquire. It seems natural, and it is what happened in this case, and in all probability it is what would happen if, Heaven forbid, such a disaster happened again; people would be disinclined to leave the big vessel for the small boat in the water on a dark night.
The only further observation I want to make about it is that naturally, when you get to this stage of knowledge, when we know all that has happened, and more particularly when we know of the disaster which took place on this 15th of April, with the great loss of life that there was there, it sets the Board of Trade, like every other person, examining into the conditions with regard to vessels going to sea. And quite rightly It showed what may happen, notwithstanding all the precautions you might take, notwithstanding that your vessel might be constructed according to the best knowledge and experience, and by one of the best builders in the world, and notwithstanding that no expense was spared. The vessel was built; as your Lordship will remember, at cost price, plus a commission; and so far as I followed the evidence there was no attempt on the part of the owners to save money, certainly no attempt by them to save money in the building of the ship which would involve in the slightest degree any omission to make a vessel either sufficiently strong, or to equip her properly for carrying passengers. And one understands why, apart from any other reason; in the competition that there is between these great liners, a vessel must be equipped according to the best results of modem science, and really taking advantage of everything that knowledge can give us at the present day, otherwise she cannot compete with the other liners. That is, no doubt, in one sense a great safety and security.
What does strike one in this matter, and what I am suggesting for your Lordship's consideration, if you think it right to put it forward as a recommendation, or as a subject which is well worthy of consideration, is that the Board of Trade might have greater powers with regard to inspection of bulkheads and requirements as to the watertight compartments and spacing and construction, and so forth. One thing is apparent from the investigation which we have made that they have practically no control. It is quite true that they have some with reference to the loadline. Your Lordship will remember what that is. It is comparatively slight, it seems to me.
Although it is quite true that shipowners as a Rule, agree to conform to requirements that may be made, the Board of Trade has little power to interfere.
Mr. Laing:
It can refuse a passenger certificate.
The Attorney-General:
What it has to do is to consider whether or not in the one case the vessel is satisfactory, that is to say, whether she is constructed satisfactorily, and they may take it into account, no doubt, the construction and division of watertight compartments. But what I mean is that it is quite possible, as it occurs to me, that greater powers might be given by Act of Parliament - they would have to be given by Act of Parliament - to the Board of Trade if, as a result of the Enquiry which is now about to take place, and which is taking place by the Committee which has been appointed since this disaster, the definite recommendations are made as to what is the best means, what is the safest means to be adopted for effective provision of watertight compartments; it occurs to me that they might have some power of enforcing them. But that depends very much upon the result of the Committee's report. All I am suggesting is that it is well worth considering - I should have to leave it there - I suggest it is well worthy of consideration whether they should not have greater powers in that respect. Suppose, for example, you got as the result of Enquiry and investigation a definite decision that a watertight deck at a certain level from the bottom would be of the greatest value; suppose you had such a finding from the Bulkheads Committee, that no doubt ought to be carried out and would have to be carried out by Act of Parliament. There would be no power as the law stands at present - that is certainly my view of the Board of Trade - to insist on that. Supposing the vessel is properly equipped as a passenger vessel I do not see that the Board of Trade would have the power to say, under the law as it stands at present, "This is the best means of construction that can be adopted; to have a watertight deck of this character, and you have not got it and, therefore, we will not give you a certificate."
The Commissioner:
Knowledge is always increasing, and if you had statutory provisions of that kind it appears to me they might require alteration every twelve months, or every six months. For my own part I do not like statutory provisions hampering trade at all, and I should very much like to know whether in Germany, for instance, there are laws which compel ships to be constructed in this way, or in that way, or whether it is left to the discretion of qualified people who examine the ship.
The Attorney-General:
Yes, I agree. That is one of the matters which no doubt would have to be considered by the Committee before it comes to a conclusion, what the course is that is adopted there and what actually are the requirements. I have two letters which we have received since the evidence was closed from the German companies which, if your Lordship thought right, could be put upon the Note; I have not troubled you with them because in view of what your Lordship's decision has been upon this question of bulkheads, it seemed unnecessary to go into detail with regard to what they do in Germany, how their vessels of the particular lines there are constructed. What I do propose to do with them is that those letters should be handed to the Committee which is going to enquire into this matter.
The Commissioner:
That is the best thing to do. I do not want the Note encumbered with them.
The Attorney-General:
No, my Lord; that is what I thought. But it is important that those who will have to deal with this should have it before them, and as we have acquired the information during the course of this investigation, I propose to have those letters sent to that Committee to consider. What I meant was not that you should have stereotyped in an Act of Parliament - a particular form of construction. I agree, if I may say so, that that would be most undesirable, because as you say, knowledge progresses week by week. I did not mean that at all. What I did mean was that it may be necessary that some further powers should be given as to requirements of the Board of Trade with reference to bulkheads and watertight compartments. I need not go into that, because the time has not come for dealing with that. It must depend upon the Report of the Committee.
I think the opinion which was formed by the Board of Trade after the receipt of this Committee's report of July, 1911, and after the investigations and the experiments which had been made for the purpose of enabling them to frame the draft Rules, is dealt with in the letter of the 16th April, the letter which was ordered on the 4th April, which sets out exactly what the Board of Trade's opinion was before the "Titanic" disaster. One may summarise it in this way, I think, that they had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to have a revision of the Tables, and they transmitted a copy of the memorandum and tables which they were proposing to adopt to the Committee, for the Committee's approval before they were published, and before they were laid on the table. That was the position.
The Commissioner:
Was the Board of Trade put in motion by anything that took place in the House of Commons; I mean, put in motion in reference to the matters they dealt with in 1911?
The Attorney-General:
Yes, certainly, a question was asked in February, 1911.
The Commissioner:
It seems to me I have seen it somewhere.
The Attorney-General:
It is quite right.
The Commissioner:
In February, 1911, some question was asked in the House of Commons.
The Attorney-General:
Yes.
The Commissioner:
And, as the result of that question the four gentlemen were asked to report.
The Attorney-General:
Yes. If you look at page 18 of the Memorandum you will see the circular which was issued which resulted in the report of the four officials.
Continued >
