TWO PILLARS OF THE BRITISH I LLOYD'S REGISTER BY SYDNEY BROOKS AMONG the objects aimed at by the Jones Act for the recreation of the American mercantile marine are the classification of ships and their insurance through purely American agencies. To an Englishman, like myself, these objects appear not merely legitimate, but laudable. If, as seems clear, the national mind of America is firmly set on reviving the days when the Stars and Stripes were to be seen on every ocean, when the Yankee clippers were famous throughout the world, and when America launched twice as many tons as Great Britain, then it is only natural that this ambition should include a control of the classification and insurance machinery. It is a sound judgment which has led Senator Jones to see in Lloyd's and Lloyd's Register two indispensable fillers of British sea-power and of Great Britain's world-wide trade. Very properly he wishes the American merchant navy to rest on its own, and not on alien foundations. He hopes for an American Lloyd's and an American Lloyd's Register. He looks forward to, and is working for, a time when cognate institutions in Washington or New York will challenge, and so far as American shipping is concerned, will oust the influence and authority of the great British organizations. As I have said, the goal he has set himself seems an eminently right and rational one to strive for. Whether he will ever reach it, or come anywhere near reaching it, is another matter. On this point, perhaps, it may help toward a sound judgment-his counand the world at large may get a better idea of Sentrymen ator Jones' chances of success-if an effort is made to describe Lloyd's and Lloyd's Register as they are and to show what part they have played, and are still playing, in building up Great Britain's merchant marine. In this article I propose to deal particularly with Lloyd's Register. These two famous corporations both derive from a coffee house managed in London by a Welshman named Edward Lloyd, in the middle of the seventeenth century, and the favorite meeting-place of shipping underwriters and shipowners. But each works independently, though in the closest coöperation, in different spheres of that vast aggregation of British shipping interests which both have been pre-eminently instrumental in constructing and expanding. Lloyd's Register is a society of merchants, shipowners, shipbuilders, underwriters and marine engineers whose function it is to classify ships. Lloyd's is an association of underwriters at the Royal Exchange who insure the ships so classified and conduct, in addition, a general insurance business on an immense scale. Their work is thus separate, but supplementary; and in some form or other it must always have been carried on since the earliest days of commerce by sea. From the time, or very shortly after, men first ventured themselves and their goods at sea, there must have been some form of marine insurance. Without it foreign commerce could hardly have been born and could certainly not have survived. But if there was insurance there must also have been the knowledge on which alone insurance could be based. It is not possible to imagine such acute traders as the Phoenicians or the Rhodians or the Venetians insuring a vessel and its cargo when they knew nothing of the condition, age and equipment of the ship. Somebody undoubtedly must have made it his business to collect information on such points, to keep a record of the vessels in which he was interested, and to grade them according to his estimate of their efficiency. That "somebody adays, not only for British ships, but for a great proportion of the world's tonnage, is Lloyd's Register. It does on a national and an international scale what was formerly the work of isolated individuals or of small groups. now Fundamentally, Lloyd's Register is a society for the classification of ships. Its central function has been from the beginning and is now that of grading vessels in various categories of merit, so that shipowners, merchants and underwriters may know everything it is essential for them to know concerning the ships in which they are interested. But a society-I wonder if Senator Jones quite realizes this -which exists to classify ships insensibly finds itself driven to undertake innumerable other and equally vital responsibilities. To begin with, it must have expert surveyors within easy reach of the principal ports to examine and report upon the vessels to which classes are to be assigned. Then it cannot differentiate between ships, or put this one in a higher grade than that one, without having formulated in its mind some fairly definite standard of strength, durability, workmanship, and so on. It follows from this that it is to everybody's interest if the standard by which the vessels are to be classified is known beforehand. A shipowner does not wish to order a ship if on completion it is placed by the classifying society in a low category. In that case he has to pay more for insuring it, and the merchants on the conveyance of whose goods he depends for his profits will fight shy of it. For when you have a society whose judgment on ships is followed by underwriters and merchants, and when the class to which a vessel is assigned fixes her standing in the eyes of the shipping world, and governs all the commercial transactions in which she plays a part, a power is created which, so long as it retains its vitality, must gradually spread to every corner of the industry. It simplifies everything, for instance, if the society roughly specifies in advance the requirements that will have to be met, if vessels are to be placed in the highest class. Owners and builders have then a model to work to, an outline of regulations to which it is to their interests to conform, if they desire the highest classification for their vessels. A society so situated is inevitably led on to inspect the ships that are candidates for classification not only when they are finished, but during process of construction. It has to satisfy itself that its rules are being complied with and that no material or fastenings of which it does not approve is being used in building the vessel. In the old days of wooden vessels an effective examination could be made after the ship was completed. But in the infinitely more complex era of construction which scientific progress has induced, this system is no longer practicable. It becomes very much to the advantage and convenience of all concerned if the society which is to classify the vessel has not only passed on and approved the plans for her construction, but inspects, tests and stamps the material to be employed, and supervises every stage of her growth while she is still on the stocks. And to-day, of course, when one speaks of a ship one does not merely mean her hull and scantlings, but her boilers and machinery and a variegated technical equipment. All these are factors in determining her character and seaworthiness. All these accordingly have to be taken into account, inspected, and approved, by the society, whose duty it will be to assign to the completed vessel her class. Then, again, ships and a ship's engines wear out. Unless she is periodically inspected a vessel may so have deteriorated as to have forfeited her class without the underwriters or the merchants or the owners being aware of it. The society, therefore, has to make provision for a regular overhauling of each ship on its register, must designate the renewals and repairs that it considers necessary, and must superintend them while they are being carried out. Only so can its classification continue to be up-to-date and to command respect. It will be seen, therefore, that a classifying society by the very law of its being finds itself committed to a host of highly technical and momentous duties embracing all the multitudinous aspects of an industry which can never know anything like finality and which has been revolutionized three or four times over within the past eighty years. But I have very far from exhausted the range of the activities that are compulsorily thrust upon it. A new method of ship-construction or of ship-propulsion is devised, a new material is discovered, innumerable mechanical inventions are developed. Who is to sit in judgment upon them? Who is to insure that they mark a real and not merely an apparent advance and that they may be adopted with safety to the public and benefit to the industry? Obviously the classification society is the only body competent to pass a verdict that is at once authoritative and independent. To gain acceptance among shipbuilders, shipowners, merchants and underwriters they must first be assured that the new device can be used without disqualifying the vessel in which it is employed for ranking in the highest class. The society necessarily has its surveyors and officials at the chief shipbuilding centres, and their reports constitute a body of information and experience much beyond that which any single firm, or any institution that does not cover the whole country, can have at its disposal. Moreover, being a volun tary organization, not working for a profit, and intent merely on holding the scales evenly between the various shipping interests and on advancing the welfare of the industry as a whole, it is in a position to bring to bear on the problems submitted to it not only an exceptionally wide and well-informed but an exceptionally impartial judgment. It knows the danger of not keeping abreast of the times and of laying down regulations that will have the effect of cramping progress. It knows also the risk, the even greater risk, of lending its authority to the employment of methods or material that have yet to be proved to be of enduring value. It is, therefore, admirably qualified to form an expert and detached opinion on whatever new invention or idea is brought before it, and to discharge this duty efficiently it must be able to command the best technical advice and all the necessary facilities for testing and experimenting with the theories and appliances and discoveries it is asked to stamp with its approval. A corollary to this function is that the society develops into a sort of clearing-house of ideas on all matters that appertain to the building of ships. Its centralized position and the unique stream of information that flows through it, and the intimate, yet independent, relations it maintains with all the yards in the country, make it a storehouse of knowledge on current shipbuilding practices. It is thus enabled to guide the development of the industry along sound and progressive lines. It collects facts, observes results, interprets their teachings, criticizes and compares. While it is not its province to originate it can, as a matter of fact, frequently exercise the prerogative of leadership by virtue of the authority attaching to its decisions. Thus, if after exhaustively testing a new material or design or method, it pronounces it to be satisfactory, the adoption of the novelty is at once enormously stimulated. In the same way, if it recommends that a steel section of a certain size and breadth and thickness should be regarded as a standardized pattern with a view to economizing the costs of production, its pronouncement is pretty sure to take speedy and universal effect. In both these cases the shipping world knows that the society's decisions have been reached only after a thorough weighing of all the available evidence by the most competent experts in the land, and that |