SPEAKING AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, London, at a combined meeting with the Greenwich Forum on February 25, John Archer, head of the Department of Trade's Marine Division, said that despite the growth in the risks facing ships at sea today, the British merchant fleet's casualty record was very good by international standards. While the UK ranked third in world tonnage of merchant ships after Liberia and Japan, the average tonnage lost by Britain in relation to tonnage at risk from 1964 to 1973 was the lowest of the seven largest merchant fleets for which comparable figures were available and over three times better than the world average.

Accidental deaths of crews had fluctuated between 140 in 1966 and 49 in 1971 and showed a considerable improvement compared with pre-war years. It was necessary tostrive constantly to maintain and improve upon this casualty record, and safeguard seafarers against old and new dangers. Britain was engaged in a great deal of rethinking on safety equipment for ships, on devices for alerting and locating missing ships, and on the updating of the training of officers and crews.

Accidental deaths among crews of fishing vessels from 1964 to 1973 had been in the range of 22 to 44 a year, though 1968 was a bad year with the loss of three trawlers in northern waters and the death of 80 men. Tragically 1974 was a bad year, with the loss of Gaul and 36 lives. To improve fishing vessel safety, the Department was introducing new fishing vessel surveys on a compulsory basis this year. It would involve the survey of some 2,300 vessels, and would require a very big effort by the Department's surveyors. Mr Archer was confident, however, that taken together with the new radio rules for fishing vessels, there would be a very significant advance in fishing vessel safety.

Mr Archer also referred to the traffic separation scheme in the Dover Straits and the introduction of the Channel Navigation Information Service in 1972 and said there had been a dramatic decline in the number of collisions in fog—from ten in 1968 to two in 1974.

However, there were still an average of three or four collisions a year in clear weather.

About 3"50 ships passed through the Dover Straits each day, and the number of 'rogue' vessels going the wrong way down the lanes had halved to aboutfive per day, though there had been less improvement with crossing traffic. He expected that when the new international collision rules came into force in 1976, requiring countries to make it compulsory for their ships to obey traffic separation schemes, these numbers would come down. In the meantime the Department prosecuted British ship owners who breached the rules, and did their best to follow up the 'rogue' vessels with their owners and overseas governments.

Oil spill incidents were showing a welcome downward trend; on the other hand HM Coastguard and the search and rescue services had had their busiest year ever in 1974 with the number of incidents up 16 per cent on 1973.

Recently there had been a major review of the organisation of search and rescue and the Coastguard itself, and the findings were still under examination.

The emphasis was on defining the Coastguard's co-ordination role more clearly and making it work even more effectively by better integration of the services. He did not believe our casualty figures for small craft were any larger in percentage terms than in countries like the USA and France that had put more emphasis on regulation and enforcement.

In conclusion, Mr Archer claimed, without complacency, that the British marine safety record matched our great maritime tradition and that the organisation was geared to tackle new tasks effectively. Inevitably, it was the shipwreck that hit the headlines while the care and attention paid to good seamanship by our mariners and the highlyprofessional work of shore-based staff tended to go unnoticed..