ページの画像
PDF
ePub

And wages are to be paid (Section 187) in the case of home trade ships within two days after the termination of the agreement, or when the seaman is discharged, and in other cases (except whalers, where special arrangements are required to meet the case of oil money, and blubber and bone money), within three days after the cargo has been delivered, or within five days after the seaman's discharge, which ever first happens. At the time of discharge a seaman is entitled to be paid on account a sum equal to one-fourth of the balance of wages due to him, the penalty on the master or owner for non-compliance is an extra payment as wages of two days' pay for every day's delay, not exceeding ten days in all. The account of wages is by a former section, to be delivered to the seaman twenty-four hours before he is paid off or discharged. Seamen can sue for their wages in a summary manner, but cannot sue for wages abroad unless discharged abroad or in danger of life. The Board of Trade have power in their discretion to refuse to pay the wages of a deceased seaman to any person not being related to the testator by blood or marriage, who claims under a will made elsewhere than on board ship, unless signed and witnessed by a superintendent or minister, a justice of the peace, or a consular or customs officer. It was the practice formerly for improper women and crimps and Jew slopsellers to obtain wills from seamen every voyage, but the above provision has materially checked such proceedings, though it has not entirely abolished them. (Sec. 200.) There are special provisions for payment of just claims by creditors, and for preventing fraudulent claims on the estates of deceased seamen, and the Board of Trade has absolute power of refusal in certain cases. This provision is also aimed at crimps, slopsellers, etc.

As regards discharge abroad, whenever a seaman is discharged abroad it is to be done, if in a colony, before a superintendent or other similar officer, if in a foreign country, before a consul, who is to act in the same way as a superintendent of a Mercantile Marine office does upon a discharge at home. And in every such case, and also in cases of men left behind on the ground of desertion, a certificate of the fact is to be obtained from that officer. Before the certificate is given the master of the ship is to deposit with the officer in money, if he can, in a bill on the owner if he cannot, the wages due to the seaman; and also, except in cases of desertion, or cases where he provides the man with other employment, or otherwise satisfies the officer that no expense will be incurred in respect of the seaman, such a sum of money as may be necessary in order to provide the seaman with a passage home. [Sec. 205.]

The forcing ashore or leaving behind any seaman or apprentice wilfully or wrongfully abroad is a misdemeanour. Distressed seamen found abroad are relieved and sent home at the expense of the British taxpayer, and masters of British ships are compelled to take them. [Secs. 211 and 212.]

By Section 232, any seaman is allowed to go ashore to make complaint to a proper officer or justice of the peace against the master or any of the crew, and the penalty on the master for not affording an opportunity, when the service of the ship admits of it, is £20. And in order to protect seamen from impositions, Sec. 233 provides that sale of and charge upon wages shall be invalid. Under that Section no wages due or accruing to any seaman or apprentice shall be subject to attachment or assessment from any Court, and by Section 234, no debt exceeding five shillings can be recovered from a seaman until the end of his voyage.

Sections 235

and 236 impose penalties on boarding house keepers for overcharges, and on any person who takes into his possession, or under his control any monies, documents, or effects of any seaman or apprentice, and does not return the same or pay the value thereof when required by such seaman or apprentice.

There are also special penalties for desertion, for neglecting or refusing to join or to proceed to sea-for absence without leave, unless it is before sailing, for quitting the ship without leave before she is secured, for acts of disobedience, assault, combining to disobey, for wilful damage, etc.-Sec. 243; and masters may apprehend deserters without warrant, and deserters may be sent on board in lieu of being sent to prison-Sec. 246. There is a penalty on seamen for giving a false name for the name of the last ship in which they served.

There are of course many other provisions in the Merchant Shipping Act which bear indirectly on the engagement, discharge, and payment of wages of seamen, but we have referred to the principal provisions on these points. We shall now have to point out how far, and why some of these provisions have failed to accomplish the end for which they were designed, and to indicate the direction in which, in our opinion, improvement is practicable and necessary.

The first and most important consideration is the necessity for bringing about an arrangement with foreign countries as regards the engagement and discharge of seamen. Seamen of any country can be engaged to serve on board British merchant ships, and British seamen can be engaged to serve on board ships belonging to almost every country; so long therefore as we have no arrange

ment whatever with the principal maritime States, regulating by common interest and common action the engagement and discharge of seamen, so long will the crimp always reap a fruitful harvest, and so long will the seaman, the shipowner, and the State suffer. It is hopeless for us at home to endeavour to put down the crimp when we know that the crews of foreign ships coming here can and do find him much employment, and when we find, as we do, that it is often difficult, sometimes even impossible, at some ports abroad to obtain any real assistance whatever from the proper authorities in arresting deserters from merchant ships. The difficulty in the way of a satisfactory understanding on this point is no doubt to be found in the reluctance of British lawyers and British courts of law to subordinate themselves to foreign consular officers in this country, and probably the British lawyers and British courts of law are right. It would no doubt be a monstrous thing for British courts and the British civil force to be required to give effect to sentences passed by foreign consuls in this country on members of the crews of foreign ships, but the same thing (monstrous or not) is done for us in many foreign countries. The absence of any arrangement on the subject of deserters, and the engagement and discharge of seamen was aptly illustrated a few days ago in the case of the United States frigate in the Thames. A great number of the crew deserted, and the police authorities had no power to interfere. The authority of the United States Consul was nil. He had no power to call on the police to arrest a single man, and the police had no power to arrest them if he had called on them to do so.

During the time of the civil war in America, the crews of British ships afforded many men to swell the ranks of the Federal Army and Navy. It suited the interests of certain parties to look with equanimity on desertions from British ships then, and on the lawlessness of the crimps, who sometimes superseded the necessity for desertion by kidnapping whole crews. The British shipowner suffered and chafed but did nothing. The United States may not be so patient, and it is within the verge of possibility that they may see the necessity for effecting some mutual understanding.

The next point for consideration is whether some alteration is not called for in the nature of agreements, and in the terms in which they are expressed. If the terms of the agreement are inelastic or not ample, the seaman often gets a discharge abroad on the ground that the voyage on which the ship is actually employed is not the voyage described in the wording of the agreement. And as a rule, the courts or tribunals acting on the principle that a seaman has a right to know the nature of the employment he enters,

generally decide in favour of the seaman where any doubt can be said to exist. Crimps, especially New York and Quebec, make a handsome living by fomenting disputes as to the terms of agreements. The British shipowner in order to make the agreement comprehensive in its terms, has made it very wide but has overreached himself even here, for it is now held that most of the agreements are so vague and general in their terms as to amount to no agreement at all. So that between agreements too precise in their terms and others too vague, the master and his crew are provided with a source of infinite contention, which with the assistance of the crimp, sometimes set to work by the seaman, sometimes set to work by the master (where plenty of wages will be forfeited by desertion), and sometimes acting ex mero motu, is made the most of to the loss of the owner or underwriter and the British taxpayer.

The Merchant Shipping Code as introduced in 1871, would to a certain extent have met the evils resulting from the present system of agreements; but would scarcely have gone as far as many persons think desirable. It would not be just to a seaman who engages to serve in a ship employed in a trade known and recognised as a short and healthy trade, if he were under the same agreement, and for the same wages to be sent on a voyage to a notoriously unhealthy place, or to a place or region where exceptional hardship would have to be endured, or exceptional and special services rendered. For example, a seaman engaged to serve to and from the Mediterranean, would have reasonable grounds for objecting if his ship were sent to the West coast of Africa. The seaman has a right to know the general nature of the service on which he is to be engaged. On the other hand so long as he is not taken to any exceptionally unhealthy place, or to any place to which ships usually employed in the like service are not sent, it is no hardship to him if the names of one or more of the countries, ports, or places to which he is sent are not stated in the agreement. Voyages now often partake, more or less, of the nature of seeking voyages. There ought to be every facility for conducting them, and there ought to be no possibility of a crew throwing up their services during a seeking voyage, solely because the agreement is not strictly accurate in naming the places of call. In all probability, at the time the agreement is signed, the owner and master know no better than the seamen exactly where the ship will be required to go during the prosecution of her voyage.

Another point is that good would be done if agreements were more in the nature of agreements for certain trades, and with

certain owners, for a certain time, than agreements for a special voyage in a special ship. For instance it would be a great boon if an owner of several large ships, or a large company could enter into an agreement with seamen for service in all or any ships afloat, in harbour, or in dock. By this means the seamen could be shifted about from one ship to another, could take their spell of harbour work, could have constant employment and constant pay—instead of engaging as for a fresh service for every voyage. The Merchant Shipping Bill of 1871 meets this proposal to a certain extent, but scarcely goes far enough. There can be no question that one of the most practical of all steps to abolish crimping, is to reframe the law in the spirit we have indicated, so that owners of ships can enter into agreements with seamen for their services generally, for a period of time and for any sort of work, instead of as at present specially for one ship and for one duty. For instance, A. B. might agree to serve at sea as well as in port in the ship or ships belonging to C. D. for a period of (two years), so long as the ship or ships of C. D. in which A. B. is engaged to serve does or do not go to the West coast of Africa, to the North Pole (or does not go to any other places especially named). Certain trades would always

command a special rate of wages.

The next point to be taken up is the advance note. The advance note like the unclean woman is a fact palpable and unpleasant, a fact ever present, always coming forwards, the root of evil, a malady the law has tried in vain to abolish. The evil will and must exist however we may preach and pray against it. Existing, we must wrestle with it. We cannot abolish it, all we can do is to make its presence as little mischievous as possible, and keep it in subjection and under active supervision. If there were no advance notes there would be no crimping. The bill proposes to make it illegal for a shipowner to give more than a month's advance, or if the shipowner does give it that he shall not be at liberty to deduct it from wages due to the seaman. This is no doubt a strong measure of interference between employer and employed, but it is demanded. So long as a seaman wants an outfit, so long must money be advanced to him; and so long as money is to be advanced on any pretence whatever, the crimps will get it. The only thing to be done is to reduce the amount of advance to the very smallest compass. The proposal to make advances in clothes, etc., instead of money is of course silly, and would if acted on give rise to a system worse than the truck system.

The next point relates to the settlement and payment of wages, and here it is that immediate alteration is wanted, and that a just

« 前へ次へ »