Capability and safety

The reasons for the concerns about unseaworthy seamen in the 1860s were rather diffuse, but they appeared to have their origins in the adverse consequences of illness, drunkenness and debauchery on safety at sea. Some activists also linked the causes of this lack of seaworthiness to the quality of accommodation and food or the lack of medical examinations prior to embarkation. However, with the exception of scurvy as a consequence of adulterated or poor-quality lemon juice, none of these aspects gained sufficient public or political credibility for improvements to be required until much later.

By the end of the nineteenth century the fitness and capability of seafarers was being viewed in much clearer terms: the nature of their duties was being analysed or surmised and this information was being used to evaluate their risks of ‘unseaworthiness’. The personal attributes being reviewed included competence, based on training and experience, and inherent or acquired capabilities such as vision, hearing or physical fitness. The fundamentals of capability requirements had long been recognised; for instance the ability of seamen to climb masts and set sails and the need for this to be learnt early in life had been used as an example of age-related learning by the physician and philosopher Erasmus Darwin in the eighteenth century. But most of the earlier forms of assessment of skills and abilities were informal and occurred during apprenticeships and training on the job.