REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES SUBMITTED BY ANDREW FURUSETH AFTER HIS RESIGNATION AS COMMISSIONER FROM THE UNITED OF LIFE AT SEA, WHICH MET IN LONDON, ENGLAND 131 SAFETY OF LIFE AT SEA. WASHINGTON, D. C., January 12, 1914. Mr. PRESIDENT: On December 22 I sent the following cable: To the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, Washington. Commission to-day considered committee reports. They contain provisions reducing existing standards of safety. Being true to safety, I can not sign any convention containing them. I tender my resignation, to be effective at once. In surrendering back to you the commission and in explanation of my action, I beg to submit the following report: The conference was divided into five committees, as follows: Committee on certificates, committee on safety of construction, committee on wireless telegraphy, committee on safety of navigation, committee on life-saving appliances, and the committee on revision, to which latter committee was assigned the duty of preparing the convention in accordance with the report from the other committees. The main part of the rules of the conference was one vote for each nation. The rule in the committee on which I served-the committee on life-saving appliances-had representatives from all the different nations represented. Under its rules of procedure the chairman stated the proposition in the agenda, and when they received a second they were open for discussion. Amendments or substitutes could only be considered if submitted by one nation and seconded by another. The voting was, as in the general conference, one vote for each nation. The work of the separate committees, except the committee on revision, to which the other committee reports were submitted, had been finished on the 20th, and the conference had taken a recess until January 8. On the 22d our commission met for a preliminary examination of the reports from the different committees. The report from the committee on life-saving appliances contains several distinct reductions in the existing legal or statutory standards of safety. British law, promulgated January 17, 1913, to become effective March 1, 1913, reads in part as follows: RULES FOR FOREIGN-GOING PASSENGER STEAMERS, INCLUDING EMIGRANT SHIPS. RULE A.-A ship of this class shall carry lifeboats in such number and of such capacity as shall be sufficient to accommodate the total number of persons which is carried, or which the ship is certified to carry, whichever number is the greater. The report of the committee on life-saving appliances provides approved lifeboats for 75 per cent of all persons on board, using the following language: If the before-mentioned lifeboats do not provide accommodations for at least 75 per cent of the persons, then additional lifeboats, of either class 1 or class 2, shall be provided, so there is accommodation for at least 75 per cent of all persons. (c) Accommodation shall be provided either in lifeboats of class 1 or class 2 or by pontoon rafts of approved type and construction for all persons. The British law, dealing with the manning of life-saving appliances issued by the board of trade, 1911, determines the number of seamen in the deck department of emigrant ships and passenger vessels coming under that designation. The schedule is based upon the cubic feet capacity of boats (carrying capacity of boats) and determines that four out of every five of the deck crew shall be "bona fide able-bodied seamen" or men of higher rating; that is to say, men of greater experience and holding positions on board ship as a result of such greater experience and higher skill. The manning of lifeboats adopted by the committee on life-saving appliances provides that— (a) For each boat or raft required to be carried on the ship efficient boat hands must be carried in accordance with the following scale: If the boat or raft is capable of carrying 60 persons or less, 3 efficient boat hands; 61 to 85 persons, 4 efficient boat hands; 86 to 110 persons, 5 efficient boat hands; 111 to 160 persons, 6 efficient boat hands; 161 to 210 persons, 7 efficient boat hands, and one additional efficient boat hand shall be carried for every extra 50 persons which the boat is capable of carrying. (b) An "efficient boat hand" shall be defined as a member of the crew who has been trained in launching, lowering, and detaching lifeboats, and in the use of oars, and has proved himself qualified to handle lifeboats. Efficient boat hands shall be able to understand and answer the orders relating to lifeboat service and duties. Efficient boat hands shall have a certificate as such, which certificate shall be issued under the authority of the administration. The "efficient boat hand" may come from the deck force or deck department; from amongst the firemen and coal passers-the engineers' department; or from amongst the cooks, stewards, or waiters the stewards' department. They need not understand the language of the officers of the vessel. The rule was deliberately so drawn that the orders of the officers could be transmitted through interpreters. This is in distinct opposition to the standard laid down by our courts who have held in the case of In re Pacific Mail Steamship Co. (C. C. V. 64, p. 410), that a crew which does not understand the orders of the officers is so inefficient that it forfeits the vessel's right to limitation of liability under our law. It is further in distinct opposition to the action of the House of Representatives in the Sixty-second Congress and the action of the Senate of the United States in the special session of the Sixty-third Congress, where it was enacted that 75 per cent of the crew of a vessel in each department thereof must understand the orders of the officers of such vessel. The number is a further reduction of the legal standard in this, that the present presumption of law is that all the crew of a lifeboat shall be efficient and the crew of a lifeboat is, according to its size and carrying capacity, from 7 to 11, or more. The report provides that there shall be lifeboat drills in harbor at least once every fortnight. The report of the committee on life-saving appliances, in dealing with old ships, provides: (a) A boat or raft which has been accepted by the administration of a contracting state on board an existing vessel may be accepted in place of a lifeboat or life raft, respectively, until the 1st of January, 1920. (b) The requirement that pontoon lifeboats shall have the bottom and deck made of two thicknesses with textile material between, and the full amount of freeboard specified for boats of this type need not be insisted upon until the 1st of January, 1920. (d) The requirement that all boats and davits shall be of sufficient strength to enable them to be safely lowered when loaded with their full complement of persons and equipment, and the requirement that the davits must be fitted with a gear of sufficient power to turn out the boat against a list need not be insisted upon. New vessels are defined as vessels whose keels are laid three months or more after the date of ratification of the convention; so that existing vessels may continue to carry their present life-saving appliances and a crew of a lower standard than the one accepted to-day. The report from the committee on wireless telegraphy reads, in part, as follows: (a) All ships engaged in international trade and having on board 50 persons or more, including both passengers and crew, or either, shall be fitted with a wireless telegraphy apparatus. (b) Provided always that each of the signatory States may, if the route and the conditions of the voyages are such as to render a wireless installation unreasonable or unnecessary, exempt from this obligation (1) Ships which do not go more than 150 sea miles from land during their voyages. (1) Ships which do not regularly or usually have 50 or more persons on board, but which take on board for a part of their voyages cargo hands: Provided, That this exception shall not be granted to ships trading from one continent to another or going outside the limits of 30° north and 30° south. On the question of keeping a constant watch, vessels having 25 or more passengers and an average speed of 15 knots or more, or vessels of an average speed of 13 knots and having on board 200 persons or more and on a voyage extending 500 miles between two consecutive ports, shall keep a constant watch. Others are regulated in a different way; that is to say, they need not have two skilled wireless operators. This is in direct opposition to our law, approved June 23, 1912, which provides in an act to amend an act entitled, "An act to require apparatus and operators for radio communication on certain steamers," approved June 24, 1910: That from and after October first, nineteen hundred and twelve, it shall be unlawful for any steamer of the United States or of any foreign country navigating the ocean or the Great Lakes and licensed to carry, or carrying, fifty or more persons, including passengers or crew or both, to leave or attempt to leave any port of the United States unless such steamer shall be equipped with an efficient apparatus for radio communication, in good working order, capable of transmitting and receiving messages over a distance of at least one hundred miles, day or night. * The radio equipment must be in charge of two or more persons skilled in the use of such apparatus, one or the other of whom shall be on duty at all times while the vessel is being navigated. To this our law has the following proviso: * * Provided, That on cargo steamers, in lieu of the second operator provided for in this act, there may be substituted a member of the crew or other person who shall be duly certified and entered in the ship's log as competent to receive and understand distress calls or other usual calls indicating danger, and to aid in maintaining a constant wireless watch so far as required for the safety of life. The report of the committee on certificates contains, in paragraphs 7 and 8, the following: 7. Each signatory State shall accept the certificates of the other signatory States for all purposes covered by the convention as of force equal to that of the certificate issued to its own ships. 8. A vessel holding the above-mentioned certificate shall be subject to control by the officials in ports of other signatory States in so far as those officials may ascertain that there is a valid certificate on board, and if necessary that the conditions of her seaworthiness conform substantially to her certificate so as to enable her to go to sea without danger to her passengers and crew. As I understand these clauses, our surveyors' rights on foreign vessels in our ports will be, under ordinary conditions, limited to ascertaining whether the vessel has an international certificate, and, if so, that it is not too old. As I understand the existing con |