Instructions to Surveyors.

Tables of Freeboard.

The Board of Trade have received the Report of the Load Line Committee, and of the tables and rules annexed thereto.

The Board of Trade accept the conclusions of that Committee as to load lines as shown in the Report and in the tables and rules, and have furnished their Officers with copies. Copies can be obtained by the public at large from the agents for the sale of Stationery Office publications, and through any bookseller.

The Board of Trade do not propose that their Officers shall detain as overloaded any cargo ship on which the load line is marked so as to give the freeboard assigned to her by those rules and tables, and which is not loaded beyond the limits prescribed therein.

As proof that the load line on a ship is marked in accordance with these rules and tables, the Board's staff at the out ports will receive the certificate of Lloyd's Register Committee where a load line has been assigned by that Committee, or the certificate of the Board of Trade where a load line has been assigned by the Board of Trade. In future, the Board of Trade do not intend to assign a load line for any ship classed in Lloyd's Register Book. In the case of ships not classed, or classed elsewhere, the Board will continue for a time, as heretofore, to assign load lines on the application of the owner in due course and accompanied by full particulars of the ship.

The Board of Trade, in making this announcement, desire to point out, for the information of all persons having the command or management of ships, that those rules and tables give minimum freeboards applicable for ships of the highest class only, and that no ships other than ships of the highest class are to be loaded so deeply as those rules and tables admit.

Ships to which a freeboard has been assigned by the Committee of Lloyd's Register, or by the Board of Trade, will, like other ships, be liable to detention, if, having regard to the time of the year and the voyage, they are loaded more deeply than the rules and tables admit, and ships to which freeboards are not assigned will receive the particular notice of the staff so far as is possible.

Whilst the Board of Trade staff will by this arrangement be greatly relieved of the responsibility for the depth of loading of ships generally, it will be the duty of the Board itself in each case submitted to the Wreck Courts to instruct their solicitor to raise the question of loading whenever it may appear that deep loading may have contributed to the loss of the ship, and it will also be the duty of the Board of Trade if in any such case it should hereafter appear that a ship was loaded more deeply than the tables allow, looking to the age, character, class, and employment of the ship, to make the owner and the person responsible for the loading of the ship a party to the case, and to ask for the opinion of the court on his conduct.