PLIMSOLL SENSATION
The Great Campaign to Save Lives at Sea
by Nicolette Jones
Abacus Books - RRP £9.99
People are inspired to write about their subject for a variety of reasons, but for Nicolette Jones it was moving into Plimsoll Road and buying an old sign for a local pub of the same name. In common with many people, she thought of ‘plimsoll’ merely in terms of a canvas shoe since overtaken by the ubiquitous trainer, but she was curious enough to delve deeper and has produced a gripping story of one man’s campaign to save lives at sea.
By the second half of the 19th century, the British mercantile marine employed some 240,000 sailors, with another 70,000 in the Royal Navy, and in 1850 alone, more than 34,000 British ships carried £75m worth of goods. But vessels were setting sail overladen and ill-repaired, condemning sailors to drowning whilst mercenary shipowners profited from insurance scams. Samuel Plimsoll was the whistle-blower on such practices, devoting his life to maritime reform, and in the process paved the way for public pressure on politicians, in an age when less than ten percent of people had the vote.
Winner of the 2006 Mountbatten Maritime Prize and just published in paperback, the book charts the background to Plimsoll’s campaigning as well as being an informed biography of the man himself. Fluently written and full of interesting facts which bring the story to life, there is a final chilling statistic: in 2005, there were still 3197 breaches of load line regulations internationally; “This story is not ended yet”.