Plimsoll, Samuel

Plimsoll, Samuel (1824-98), coal merchant, b. Bristol, England.

Samuel Plimsoll, being a coal merchant in London, learned a great deal about the ships bringing goods into the port and saw the grave dangers caused to sailors by the overloading of ships and other bad practices.

He wrote a book about these, Our Seamen: An Appeal, and he became a Member of Parliament and helped to get a Merchant Shipping Act passed in 1876. By this Act, British ships had to have load-line markings painted on them and these markings came to be known as the Plimsoll Line.

The Plimsoll Line shows how much cargo a ship can safely carry under different conditions, and the Act forbade overloading.

By an agreement made in 1930, many nations today use the Plimsoll Line for load-line marking.