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Dedicated to Mr. Plimsol

The phantom-bark made never a sound.
And the twain were casting dice
“Let the crew be drowned, for the sum is round,”
Said he “and it’s worth the price!”

Thomson, the cartoonist, here comments on the the so-called death ships — unseaworthy vessels that owners insured in hopes that they would sink and gain them insurance moneys at the cost of the sailors’s lives. B. Traven, famous for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927), wrote The Death Ship (1926) about this practice.

Plimsol, to whom the cartoon and poem are dedicated, was a member of William E. Gladstone’s cabinet who worked to establish safety standards for ships, and the Plimsol Line (also known as the Plimsol mark or International Load Line ) is, according to the United States Ocean Service, “a reference mark located on a ship's hull that indicates the maximum depth to which the vessel may be safely immersed when loaded with cargo.” The NOAA also explains that “Samuel Plimsoll (1824–1898) was a member of the British Parliament who was concerned with the loss of ships and crews due to vessel overloading. In 1876, he persuaded Parliament to pass the Unseaworthy Ships Bill, which mandated marking a ship's sides with a line that would disappear below the waterline if the ship was overloaded. The line, also known as the Plimsoll mark, is found midship on both the port and starboard hulls of cargo vessels and is still used worldwide by the shipping industry.” This cartoon, then. appeared three years before Parliament passed the law mandating the Plimsol line. — George P. Landow

Related material

• “The Ancient Mariner” — another “Terrible Tale of the Sea” (“Fun” cartoon)
• The Shipwreck Image and Situation as Paradigm
• The reality of shipwreck
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

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Last modified 20 May 2018