The Plimsoll Line

Tags

transport

This peculiar symbol that looks like some sort of secret code, is in fact the symbol painted on the hull of a ship to ensure the ship is not overloaded. The line through the middle of the circle is known as the International Load Line, Plimsoll line or water line, and that line is not to disappear under water when the ship is loaded up. When Samuell Plimsoll (1824-1898) came up with the scheme, the circle and the horizontal line where all that was required, but over time the additional symbol on the right was added to allow for different water conditions and hence different water densities.

Plimsoll was not the first to come up with the idea; there were already loading regulations in Crete 2,500 BC and in the Venetian Republic, and the city of Genoa and the Hanseatic League required ships to show a load line. In the case of Venice this was a cross marked on the side of the ship, and for Genoa three horizontal lines. In the 1860s, losses of ships through overloading increased dramatically and Samuel Plimsoll set out to find a solution. In 1867, he tried to get a bill passed through Parliament dealing with the load line question, but in vain as there were too many shipowning MPs who feared for their profits. Subsequently, Plimsoll published Our Seamen. An Appeal in which he set out his concerns and solution. Following the publication, a Royal Commission on unseaworthy ships was set up. In 1876, the United Kingdom Merchant Shipping Act made the load line mark compulsory.

On 14 February 1928, almost 30 years after Plimsoll’s death, a notice appeared in The Times, announcing plans to erect a statue to honour Plimsoll.

Permission is being sought from the Office of Works to set up, at the Westminster end of the Embankment, a statue of Samuel Plimsoll, known as “the Sailors’ Friend”, and the originator of the load line for British shipping. The statue which weighs three tons, is of bronze on a granite base, and is the work of Mr. P.V. Blundstone, of Kensington. The Seamen’s Union decided, instead of endeavouring to raise money for the memorial by public subscription, to defray the cost themselves. Mr. J. Havelock Wilson, the president of the National Union of Seamen, said that the idea of a memorial to Plimsoll had been in the minds of those associated with the seamen’s movement for some time. Seafarers from all parts of the world would attend the ceremony.

It took a year and a half to sort out the permission and logistics, but the Daily Mail of 21 August, 1929, could announce in their ‘To-day’s events’ column that “Sir Walter Runciman unveils memorial to Samuel Plimsoll, Victoria Embankment Gardens”. A very short announcement, but one with a lasting result as we can still walk past the gardens (on the outside, at the Embankment side) to see the statue.

Although plimsoll or plimsole shoes, that is shoes with canvas uppers and a rubber sole, had been known since the 1830s, they only had a name change from ‘sand shoe’ to ‘plimsole’ in the 1870s, because the horizontal line on the rubber resembled the plimsoll line on ships. And as with ships, if the water came above the line, you got wet.

More information on the Plimsoll Line and on Samuel Plimsoll himself on the Wikipedia-pages here and here.

Run over by a train

Tags

Postman's Park, transport

On Friday 11 January, 1878, an unfortunate accident happened at Woolwich Arsenal train station. It transpired that a woman had been waiting for a train to take her to the County Lunatic Asylum near Maidstone. She was accompanied by a minder, but when she saw the train coming, she became violent and attempted to escape. From this point onwards, the reports in the newspapers diverge slightly, but unfortunately the outcome was the same. According to Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper⁽¹⁾, a railway inspector, Frederick Alfred Craft – not Croft as his plaque in Postman’s Park would have it – saw what was happening and tried to grab hold of the woman, but in the struggle, she knocked him onto the line. According to The Morning Post⁽²⁾, however, the woman had thrown herself in front of the engine and Craft jumped after her to pull her away. Whatever the true sequence of events, Craft was run over by the train and died of his wounds shortly after in Woolwich infirmary. At the inquest it was decided that Craft had “expired from injuries received whilst endeavouring to save the life of another”⁽³⁾.

Plaque for Frederic Alfred Craft in Postman’s Park

Frederic Alfred was probably born in late 1847 as he was baptised on the 9th of January, 1848 at St. Andrew’s Enfield as the son of Frederick and Elizabeth Craft. The occupation given for Frederick senior is farmer. In the 1851 census, the family still lives at Enfield, but by 1861 they have moved to Stanford, Kent. In 1871, Frederic senior is no longer farming, but has switched careers and is now a railway porter. Young Frederic is no longer living at home, but lodging in Eltham. He too has taken up a job with the railways and is listed in the census as railway signalman. On 15 September, 1872, Frederic junior, “railway servant”, marries Elizabeth Phillips, the daughter of Edward Phillips, a stone mason. The couple are to have two sons, Frederick Thomas (born 22 January, baptised 6 april 1873) and William Harry (born 22 April, baptised 13 June 1875). In both entries for the baptisms, Frederic Alfred is listed as railway signalman. One of the newspapers reporting on Craft’s accident said that he had recently been promoted from railway guard to inspector at the Woolwich station.⁽²⁾

Woolwich Arsenal station c. 1900

Woolwich station had been opened in 1849, serving the North Kent Line of the South-Eastern Railway Company from London to Gillingham. The building was to be replaced in 1906 and again in 1996 with the present glass and steel structure. The South-Eastern Railway Company instigated a subscription after the accident for the widow and orphans with a £20 donation and the Woolwich Arsenal station master received “numerous subscriptions from various parts of the country” to add to the initial sum. The funeral took place at St. Thomas’s Church, Woolwich and drew a large crowd including many railway workers.⁽³⁾

About a fortnight after Frederic’s death, a bit more information about the woman who caused the accident emerged. It turned out that when the board of guardians took possession of her property after she was conveyed to the asylum, a considerable number of valuable articles were found in her house, amongst which “some ready money, a deed representing £900 invested in Three per Cent” and some “very costly jewellery”. The money and jewellery were sent to the bank for safekeeping and the cost of the woman’s maintenance were to be defrayed out of the proceeds.⁽⁴⁾ No mention was made in the paper of any sort of compensation or damages for the widow out of these proceeds.

Postman’s Park

(1) Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 13 January 1878.
(2) The Morning Post, 16 January 1878.
(3) The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, 26 January 1878.
(4) Reynolds’s Newspaper, 3 February 1878.

Greathead

Tags

civil engineering, transport

James Henry Greathead (1844-1896), also known as ‘the father of the Tube’, was born in South-Africa. In 1864 he became a pupil of civil engineer Peter W. Barlow (1776-1862) who had already patented a more basic tunnelling shield system in the 1860s. The shield they eventually came up with for the Tower Subway, which ran from Tower Hill to Bermondsey, was named the Barlow-Greathead shield. They combined this shield with the positioning of cast-iron segments to form the tunnel’s solid structure. Greathead also patented his idea of using hydraulic power to move the tunnelling segments forward. In this way, tunnels could be dug without disturbing the land above the tunnel. Up till then, the cut and cover method had been used, i.e. digging a trench in the road as deep as necessary, lining the sides with brickwork, covering the top with brick arches and filling it all in again,  causing a lot of disruption to the congested Victorian traffic in the process. Greathead and Barlow’s method caused a lot less destruction to the streets, not to mention the disturbance to everyday life.

Statue near the Royal Exchange

Greathead went on to work as an engineer with several railway lines, among them the Richmond extension of the Metropolitan District Railway. In 1884, he was engaged to work on the City & South London Railway, the section from King William Street to Stockwell (now part of the Northern line) which opened in 1890. It was the first electric railway to run underground.

His bronze statue by James Butler (1931-) was unveiled near the Royal Exchange in 1994 and seems to be positioned in an awkward place in the middle of the road, but that is because it is hiding a ventilation shaft for the Underground. In the photograph of the bronze plaque surrounded by Greathead’s name in marble, the workmen can be seen digging out the rubble while the cast-iron tunnel segments are clearly visible around them.

A photograph of the real working conditions underground can be seen here.

Plaque on the side of the marble base