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(8) Heating and Cooking Stoves. Cooking stoves should not be
permitted in inhabited spaces, and heating stoves, where used, should be
so constructed, and with efficient flues, so as to prevent the escape, into
any inhabited space, of noxious or injurious fumes or gases.
(9) The fore part of steamers is an unsuitable place for the berthing
of crews, and where possible they should be berthed aft.
No alteration shall be made in any living quarters after registration
unless with the consent and approval of a Port Sanitary Authority,
preferably the Sanitary Authority who originally inspected the vessel
before registration.
Sir Gilbert Parker, M.P. for Gravesend, moved a new clause before the
Standing Committee on Trade, which proposed to amend the principal Act so
as to provide that the minimum space in the sleeping compartment on board
ship should be 120 cubic feet per head, in place of 72 cubic feet, and the
superficial space should be 18 instead of 12 feet.
He also proposed a new sub.section enacting that, where practicable,
accommodation for seamen or apprentices should be provided in the after
part of the ship, and a separate room set apart for the crew's meals.
He pointed out that if 72 cubic feet were to be accepted as the standard of
comfort of seamen, then we had a standard lower than that provided for
criminals and cattle.
The cubical capacity proposed, namely 120 cubic feet, was practically one.
third of that which was already provided in factories, lodging.houses and
military barracks, and it was the least that ought to be granted.
He also pointed out that it was impossible to give the same light and
ventilation in the fore part of the ship as would be the case in the after part.
The President of the Board of Trade, on behalf of the Government,
expressed the opinion that what crews really required was not so much an
increase in the sleeping accommodation as in the messing accommodation,
inasmuch as they had to eat in their sleeping quarters, and that was not
desirable.
Petty Officers had mess rooms, but the crew had to do everything in the
one room allotted to them.
He suggested that 120 cubic feet of space proposed by Sir Gilbert Parker
should stand, but that the shipbuilder should be at liberty to give the extra
space if he chose in mess.rooms, bath.rooms, and washing.places, and should
deduct their measurement from the total, so long as the minimum sleeping
accommodation did not go below the present standard of 72 cubic feet.