A FORTNIGHT ago, we told how Samuel Plimsoll dreamed up the Plimsoll Line, a maritime safety marking, when he was staying at a guesthouse in Redcar High Street.
Last week, Plimsoll’s great-grand-daughter, Daphne Rose of Malton, put us straight on the letters page, saying that the Derby MP witnessed the dangers of the “coffin ships” while visiting the seaside resort in 1864 but the concept of the line, which showed when a ship was overloaded, came from James Hall, a Newcastle shipowner.
However, it was Plimsoll who championed the idea, as this splendid piece of political memorabilia shows in the collection of David Kerfoot, of Ainderby Steeple, a Deputy Lieutenant of North Yorkshire.
It is a rare Staffordshire jug which celebrates Plimsoll’s success in steering the Bill through the turbulent Parliamentary waters. Its voyage ended with it becoming mandatory for every ship to show the line, as it is today, and so Plimsoll became known, as the jug says, as “the Sailor’s Friend”.
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