661 Samuel Plimsoll

Constituency  : Derby  1868-80

Samuel  recaptured  the  second  seat  at  Derby  lost  in  1865  with  a  big  majority. He had  been  the  unsuccessful  candidate.

Samuel  was  born  in  Bristol  and  started  work  as  a  brewery  clerk. He  rose  to  be  its  manager. He  then  struck  out  as  a  coal  merchant  but  failed  and  was  reduced  to  near-destitution. It  was during  this  period  that  he  became  concerned  about  "coffin  ships"- overloaded  unseaworthy vessels  put  to  sea  because  they  could  still  be  insured. He  later  recovered  his  financial  standing  by  patenting  a  new  system  of  loading. He  was  friends  with  Garibaldi  and  Cobden. In  1866  he  was  president  of  the  Sheffield  Reform  League.

Samuel  got  to  work  on  this  straight  away  when  he  got  into  Parliament  but  faced  problems with  the  number  of  ship-owning  MPs  in  the  Commons, many  of  them  fellow Liberals.  In  1871  the  government  actually  made  things  worse  with  the  Merchant  Shipping  Act  which  made  sailors  subject  t  imprisonment  if  they  refused  to  honour  their  contract.In  1872 he  published  his  popular  polemic  Our  Seamen  and  in  1873  obtained  a  Royal  Commission  on  the  subject. Queen  Victoria  gave  tacit  support  to  his  campaign.  A  number  of  shipowners  tried  to  sue  him  for  libel  but  never  succeeded.

Disraeli's  government  introduced  a  Bill  which  Samuel  accepted  on  the  "half  a  loaf"  principle. He  lost  his  cool  in  the  chamber  when  the  bill  was  dropped  and  Hartington  had  to  intervene  to  prevent  him  being  disciplined. Public  agitation  forced  the  government  to  return  to  the  subject  the  following  year  with  amendments  to  the  Merchant  Shipping  Act  which  introduced  the  Plimsoll  Line  to  indicate  the  level  of  safe  loading  and  gave  the  Board  of  Trade  powers  of  inspection. A  surprise  opponent  was  the  novelist  Joseph  Conrad  who  said  the  Line  was  based  on " an  outrageous  assumption"   and  the character  of  Grimes  in  The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus  is  based  on  him.

Samuel's  parliamentary  career  ended  in  1880  when  he  relinquished  his  seat  to  the  Home  Secretary  William  Harcourt who  had  lost  the  mandatory  by-election  after  his  appointment.  Samuel  had  numerous  offers  from  constituencies  in  1885  and  chose  badly, suffering  defeat  in  Sheffield  Central. He  later  became  disillusioned  with  the  Liberals  for  failing  to  advance  shipping  reform.

Samuel's  later  campaigns  included  the  conditions  on  cattle  ships  and  trying  to  get  a  fairer  portrayal  of  Britain  in  American  textbooks.

Samuel  was  a  Congregationalist.

He  died  in  1898  aged  74.