APPENDIX X.

REPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL TONNAGE COMMISSION, SIGNED AT CONSTANTINOPLE, DECEMBER 18, 1873

APPENDIX X.

THE REPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL TONNAGE COMMISSION ASSEMBLED AT CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1873.

The international commission which has met at Constantinople, in pursuance of the invitation addressed by the Government of his imperial majesty the Sultan to the maritime powers, has taken for its guidance the circular dispatches of the imperial Government to their agents abroad, dated, respectively, January 1 and August 13, 1873, and the vizirial letters addressed to his highness the Khedive of Egypt of July 12 and 30, 1873, as well as the instructions of the Sublime Porte to their delegates. It has devoted 21 sittings to the discussion of the questions submitted to it, and has followed the rules of discussion which it had previously laid down, as shown in the procès verbaux annexed to this report.

In fixing the order of its labors the commission has thought it advisable to abide by the suggestions of his imperial majesty's Government, contained in the letters addressed to the powers and in the instructions given to the Ottoman delegates.

These documents recommended the investigation in the first place of the best mode of ascertaining: First, the total and the utilizable capacity of a ship; and second, as a consequence thereof, the examination of the scale of dues as now levied by the company on the Suez Canal. The commission, following this order of ideas, divided its work into two distinct parts, viz: 1. Question of tonnage generally.

2. The question of the tolls on the Suez Canal.

Taking the first point, and considering it in all its aspects, the commission classified it under two principal headings-gross tonnage, net tonnage.

The commission presents as follows the reasons which determined its opinion on that part of its labors: It is a traditional usage of all maritime countries to submit merchant vessels to a measurement, the result whereof, known under the general name of "tonnage," serves as the basis of the taxation to which a ship is or can be made liable everywhere and under any circumstances. The fixing of tonnage appertains in every country to the sovereign power as one of the attributes of public authority. Although this was originally determined in every state according to local convenience, yet the different systems of the various maritime countries tended toward a common rule, and gradually, as maritime commerce increased, the special privileges reserved to vessels of individual nations under their navigation laws gave way to international competition.

"Displacement," with a unit of weight and the supposed equivalent in volume, was the main principle of the old rules of tonnage for determining what a ship could carry or contain. But experience has shown everywhere the impossibility of determining by a fixed and invariable rule, in a constant manner, the carrying power of a ship, which necessarily varies according to the nature, the form, and density of each of the component parts of a cargo, as well as according to the season, state of the weather, and the respective length of voyages. It is, on the contrary, always possible to measure exactly the internal capacity of a ship, and to deduct therefrom, in a practical way, the spaces which manifestly can not be utilized for carrying freight. The different enactments on this subject, after passing through analogous stages of experiments and study, have all arrived at this result. Happily, in spite of the variety of the processes employed, the

efforts to establish, under nearly similar conditions, a comparative statistic of the maritime tonnage of the different nations have at last proved successful. If the same rules of measurement are everywhere adopted, just comparison between ship and ship will be effected satisfactorily, and shipping will be everywhere taxed after an uniform and equitable mode.

This unification of tonnage may be realized by adopting a formula combining the three following conditions, viz:

1. That of causing the internal capacity of a ship to be measured with all the precision that geometrical science is practically capable of.

2. That of expressing this capacity in tons the unit of which is obtained by a common divisor which best embodies for all maritime countries the ancient traditions of their common experience, and which gives as quotient a mean of all the varying conditions under which ships are employed.

3. That of disallowing, in determining the net tonnage which is to be the basis of taxation, any other deduction of space but that which can not be used for earning freight by being employed for carrying passengers or merchandise.

The commission has considered whether it would not be better to suppress the name of "ton of measurement" in order to avoid the continual confusion between this ton and the different tons of weight or volume employed in trade, but, after patient deliberation, it has formed the opinion that the time has not yet come when such a change in the usages of the commercial and maritime world can be recommended, and it has decided to adopt as unit of measurement the ton of capacity of Moorsom's system, viz, of 100 English cubic feet or 2.83 cubic meters.

The international commission, after laying down these principles, acknowledged that the process of measuring the capacity of ships established in the United Kingdom by the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, under he name of Moorsom's system, realizes best the conditions required to determine gross tonnage, and agreed that no other system can better secure the application of the precise rules of deduction which are to determine the net tonnage, nor lend itself with greater advantage to the unification of tonnage at which the commission is seeking to arrive. It is further recognized:

1. That such is the opinion of the maritime powers, inasmuch as Germany, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, the United States of America, France, Italy, Norway, and Turkey have successively adopted Moorsom's system, with slight variations in its application, and Belgium, Spain, Holland, and Sweden intend, as it has been declared by their respective delegates, shortly to adopt it.

2. That as regards the net tonnage of steamships the enactments of the English law of 1854 are not all that could be desired, inasmuch as for a class of vessels whose engines occupy a certain proportion of the total capacity the deduction is one of a percentage of the gross tonnage, whilst in other ships the deduction is derived only from the space occupied by the engines.

3. That there exists two other systems under which deductions are made, and that the difference between these two consists in the mode of dealing with the coal bunkers. The first regards movable bunkers, and is governed by the Danube rule; the other regards fixed bunkers, and is adopted in Germany, Austria, France, and Italy. Under the first of these systems a shipowner is free to employ his ships for commerce generally throughout the world, increasing or diminishing the space applicable for coals according to the requirements of each voyage, whilst by the other system he is obliged to adopt fixed bunkers inapplicable for cargo, and which can only hold coals for a certain duration of voyage. Considering that the opinions are divided upon the respective advantages of these systems, the commission recommends for the acceptance of the maritime powers the modes of procedure hereinafter contained, and the rules of measurement annexed to the present report.

If these recommendations be adopted, it would be desirable that ships' papers should contain all details of measurement, the calculation by which gross tonnage has been found, and the deductions for determining net tonnage allowed. In any case where, in the measurement of the total capacity of a ship, any exceptions have been allowed, such exceptions ought to be mentioned in her papers.