CHAPTER XII.

INTERNATIONAL UNIFORMITY IN TONNAGE AND

MEASUREMENT: PAST EFFORTS, FUTURE

618610-13- -13

POSSIBILITIES.

185

CHAPTER XII.

INTERNATIONAL UNIFORMITY IN TONNAGE AND MEASUREMENT: PAST EFFORTS, FUTURE POSSIBILITIES.

In 1862 the British Board of Trade, in a Memorandum Pointing Out the Importance of the Uniform System of Tonnage Measurement, stated that:

If one system could be adopted by all maritime nations, so that the capacity of any given ship, when once officially ascertained and denoted on her official papers, could be everywhere understood and recognized as valid, the advantages gained would be very great. The statistics of navigation would be rendered more simple, intelligible, and accurate. The merchant or shipowner would at once understand the size and capacity of the ships he employs or purchases; he would also escape the annoyance and expense of remeasurement; and, lastly, taxation when imposed would be rendered more simple and more just. Under these circumstances there can be but one opinion as to the utility, if not the necessity, of some general system of measuring merchant shipping.'

During the half century that has elapsed since this admirable statement was made of the reasons for the international unification of the rules governing the measurement and tonnage of vessels the world's commerce and shipping have increased many fold; the Suez, Amsterdam, Kiel, Corinth, and Manchester ocean ship canals have been brought into existence, and the second of the world's great interoceanic highways-the Panama Canal-has been brought near completion. The importance of international tonnage unity has grown greater with the progress of commercial intercourse among nations, but diversity still prevails in vessel measurement rules.

The opening of the Panama Canal, which will be a commercial event of world-wide influence, suggests, as did the opening of the Suez Canal more than four decades ago, that serious consideration should be given to the necessity of unifying tonnage and vessel-measurement rules. Possibly the completion of the Panama Canal may, as is greatly to be desired, cause efforts to be made to bring about uniform tonnage rules. Should an earnest attempt now be made by Great Britain, the United States, and the other leading commercial nations, the probability of the successful unification of tonnage and measurement rules would doubtless be greater than it was 40 and 50 years ago. The countries of the world are to-day closely united commercially, and their experience in solving problems of mutual interest has lessened the obstacles to international cooperation.

In various parts of this report and of the appendices the differences in the vessel-measurement rules of Great Britain, Germany, France, the United States, and the Suez Canal Co. are pointed out. This indicates what needs to be done to bring about the unification of tonnage practice. A history of the past efforts to accomplish this result will show that the importance of the subject is appreciated by maritime countries and may possibly facilitate the initiation of future negotiations among the leading nations with a view to the early establishment of a single international code of rules for the measuring of vessels and for the determination of the tonnage upon which shipping charges shall be paid in all the ports of the world and at all ocean ship canals. It is for these reasons that this chapter is included in this report upon rules for the measurement of vessels using the Panama Canal.

THE EFFORTS OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION OF THE DANUBE TO BRING ABOUT INTERNATIONAL TONNAGE UNIFORMITY.

The treaty of Paris, by which, in 1856, the European Commission of the Danube was established, provided that "all vessels [using the port of Sulina and navigating the lower Danube] should pay alike without distinction of flags." This treaty, like the concession which the Suez

1 See Report of Select Committee on Tonnage, 1874, p. 231.

Canal Co. received from the Turkish Government and like the Hay-Pauncefote treaty between the United States and Great Britain, requires the charges upon ships to be imposed upon the same tonnage basis and without discrimination. When by 1860 the European Commission of the Danube had carried out the improvements of the Danube sufficiently to warrant the imposition of charges upon shipping making use of the port of Sulina and navigating the lower Danube, a tariff was issued by the commission imposing tolls upon the net tonnage of vessels as determined by the British Merchant Shipping Act of 1854. The size of vessels of different nationalities being expressed in various kinds of tons, the commission worked out a list of factors or percentages to apply to the tonnage of the vessels not measured by the Moorsom system, in order to reduce the tonnage of all ships to the equivalent of their net tonnage, British measurement. In order to secure the information necessary to determine these factors or percentages, the commission applied the British rules to a number of vessels, but the data secured by the commission was obtained by measuring so few ships that the table of equivalents was only roughly accurate. It soon became evident that serious discriminations resulted from the application of the table of percentages, and, as stated by Sir John Stokes, the representative of Great Britain on the commission:

In the year 1861 the commission formally recorded the desire felt by it that a universal system of tonnage measurement should be adopted in order to establish a real equality between ship and ship and between flag and flag. This desire was repeated from time to time as the protocols of the commission testify.1

The efforts of the European Commission of the Danube to bring about uniform tonnage laws in the principal maritime countries of Europe proved unsuccessful and the commission was compelled to adopt its own code of rules. This was done when the new tariff of 1871 was issued. These rules provided for the measurement of vessels by the Moorsom rules, 100 cubic feet being considered a ton, but the rules provided for propelling-power deduction in accordance with the Danube instead of the percentage rule. It was this action of the Commission of the Danube that gave to this rule for propelling-power deduction the name of Danube, although the rule first appeared in the British Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, by which act it was applied to vessels to which the percentage rule did not apply for making propelling-power deductions.

It was not the practice of the European Commission of the Danube actually to measure all vessels to determine their tonnage. The rules of the commission determined what spaces would be included in net tonnage. If the tonnage of such spaces was expressed by the vessel's certificates in other than Moorsom tons of 100 cubic feet, the tonnage was multiplied by such a factor as would reduce it to the equivalent of Moorsom tons-the measurement rules being accompanied by a revised table of equivalents or factors to be applied to the tonnage of vessels of different nationalities. In 1876 the European Commission of the Danube adopted the Suez measurement rules, substituting them for the rules it had adopted in 1871.

NEGOTIATIONS CONCERNING UNIFORM TONNAGE RULES BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND OTHER COUNTRIES, 1862 TO 1870.

In 1862 Great Britain enacted a law, referred to below, providing that, when any foreign nation adopted the British system of measurement, the tonnage of vessels as stated in their official papers would be accepted at the British ports without remeasurement of the ships concerned; and, at the time of the enactment of this law, the British Board of Trade, through the foreign office, submitted to the French Government the memorandum quoted at the beginning of this chapter, "pointing out the importance of the uniform system of tonnage measurement." This memorandum urged other countries to adopt the leading features of the British Merchant Shipping Act of 1854.

This appeal on the part of the British Government caused the French Government to appoint, in 1863, a commission to investigate and report upon tonnage. This was, in fact, the third commission which France had appointed within a comparatively short time. There had been a commission established in 1855, and another in 1861, to report upon the advisability of changing the French measurement rules as adopted in 1837.

1 Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Tonnage, 1874, p. 3.

The commissions of 1855 and 1861 did not recommend the adoption by France of the Moorsom system, but the commission of 1863 recommended that France adopt and put in force the Moorsom system and the British measurement rules. Unfortunately, no action followed this recommendation, although the subject was not abandoned by the French Government, as is evidenced by the statement by the French minister of foreign affairs, made in 1869 in a letter addressed to De Lesseps, president of the Suez Canal Co. A commission that De Lesseps had appointed in 1868 to recommend a tonnage basis for the Suez Canal tolls had advised the company to levy the Suez tolls upon the net tonnage of vessels as stated in their certificates of registry until the negotiations then in progress for the international unification of tonnage had been successful. The statement made by the French minister of foreign affairs was that:

My department is especially occupied with this important question of agreement with other competent administrations, and, at the suggestion of the European Commission of the Danube, has put itself to work with the British Government to elaborate in common an international system of measurement to be submitted for acceptance by all the States. These labors have not yet had any definite result, but they are in search of one, and the opening of the Suez Canal will have the effect of hastening a solution which is of interest to the entire commercial world, while showing the impossibility of maintaining the present conditions longer.1

While these negotiations between France and Great Britain were being carried on, communications of similar tenor were being exchanged by other maritime countries. The only countries, however, that took action were the United States, 1865, and Denmark, 1867, which adopted the Moorsom system of measuring vessels and the Moorsom ton as the unit of vessel size. Whatever might otherwise have been the result of these negotiations, they were temporarily brought to naught by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Another reason why international negotiations carried on between 1862 and 1870 failed to bring about uniform measurement and tonnage rules was the decision of the British courts in 1866 holding that the Board of Trade had acted without the authority of law when, in 1860, it abandoned the percentage rule concerning propelling-power deductions.

The Board of Trade in its memorandum of 1862, which was made the basis of international negotiations concerning the unification of tonnage, had stated that "in 1854 an attempt was made to determine this deduction (for propelling power) by a fixed percentage, but the difficulties of doing this fairly and universally have proved so great that it has been found necessary to adopt the plan of simply measuring the contents of the space and to deduct them from the aggregate contents of the ship." This administrative order concerning propelling-power deductions made in 1860 having been held to be illegal by the High Court of Justice, in 1866, the Board of Trade and the British Government were thereby embarrassed in urging other nations to adopt the British tonnage rules, as embodied in the act of 1854. The Board of Trade besought Parliament to amend the act of 1854, but without success.

ADOPTION OF MOORSOM TONNAGE SYSTEM, AND ACCEPTANCE OF TONNAGE CERTIFICATES.

The United States and Denmark were the only countries that adopted the Moorsom ton and the Moorsom system of vessel measurement prior to 1871; but, between 1870 and 1880, all of the maritime nations of Europe, with the exception of Belgium, adopted the Moorsom tonnage and measurement system. The following table states the date upon which the Moorsom system became effective in the countries of the world that have thus far taken action: TABLE XIII.-Nations that have adopted the Moorsom ton and the Moorsom measurement system.