Here Mr. Plimsoll indicates another risk for the poor sailor: “There is, I fear, great reason to think that ships are occasionally lost from the very imperfect manner in which some of them are built; in some cases, I think you will see that something worse ought to be said. I do not say the cases are many; still, they exist, and we have done nothing to prevent it. The first time I introduced a bill to prevent overloading, I alluded (mentioning no names) to the case of one ship-owner who, trading to the West Indies for sugar (a good voyage, deep water, and plenty of sea room all the way) had, out of a fleet of twenty-one vessels, lost no less than ten of them in less than three years. “After I had concluded my speech in moving the second reading, a member accosted me in the lobby and said: ‘Mr. Plimsoll, you were mistaken in that statement of yours.’ ‘What statement?’ I answered. ‘Oh, that when you said a ship-owner had lost ten ships in less than three years from overloading.’ ‘I mentioned no names,’ I said. ‘No, but I know who you meant. He is one of my constituents, and a very respectable man indeed. It is not his fault; it is the fault of the man who built his ships, for one of them was surveyed in London and was found to be put together with devils. He knew nothing about it, I assure you.’ ‘Devils?’ I said. ‘Yes.’ ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ ‘Oh, devils are sham bolts, you know; that is, when they ought to be copper, the head and about an inch of the shaft are copper, and the rest is iron.’ “I have since found there are other and different sham bolts used, where merely a bolthead (without any shaft at all) is driven in, and only as many real bolts used as will keep the timbers in their places. Now these bolts are used to go through the outside planking, the upright timber, not the inner planking (ceiling) of a ship, and through the vertical or drooping part of a piece of iron called a knee, on the upper part of which the deck-beams rest, and to which the deck-beams are also bolted from above. These bolts, therefore, are from thirteen to eighteen inches in length.” The following examples will speak for themselves. Mr. Plimsoll says:—“On the occasion of one of my visits to a port in the north, I was met by a gentleman who knew what my errand there was likely to be, and he said, ‘Oh, Mr. Plimsoll, you should have been here yesterday: a vessel went down the river so deeply loaded, that everybody who saw her expects to hear of her being lost. She was loaded under the personal directions of her owner, and the captain himself said to me, “Isn’t it shameful to send men with families to sea in a vessel loaded like that?” Poor fellow, it is much if ever he reaches port.’ Half a dozen others confirmed this statement. The captain ‘was greatly depressed in spirits,’ and a friend—not the owner, mark you!—gave him some rockets—‘in case of the worst.’ Two men averred that they would not go if the owner gave them the ship.