only this picture of Plimsoll when he said farewell to his sweetheart, politics, and resigned from the Commons at the 1880 election in favour of William Harcourt, who was the Liberal Home Secretary who had lost his seat. He believed Harcourt would be more effective in the House than he had been as a defender of sailors and continued himself to agitate from outside. In fact you can see a ship sailing by that has Liverpool on it because for a while there was the suggestion that he might stand for Liverpool. He did stand but he wasn’t elected. That was his last opportunity â€“ his ship sailed and he was out of politics. Harcourt was not as committed to the cause as Plimsoll had hoped, but JosephChamberlain, father of Neville ‘peace in our time’ Chamberlain, took over and secured the fixed load line in 1890.

I was thinking of reading you a shipwreck from my book but decided instead to read you a discovery. At the Great Plimsoll Meeting there was a poet and an actor, Arthur Matthison, here on the left, who gave a recitation of his own composition called ‘Coffin Ships’ in the persona of an old sea dog talking to his shipmates on a ship â€“ presumably in a different costume. The performance was later reprised in 1875 â€“ the height of Plimsoll mania - in theatres by a woman, the actress Adeline Billington who is on the right, by popular demand. She had been much admired by Dickens for playing Nancy