Merchant Shipping (Safety Convention) Act, 1952

Rules for life-saving appliances.

11.—(1) The following section is hereby substituted for section 427 of the Principal Act—

“427. (1) The Minister may, in relation to any ships to which this section applies, make rules (in this Act referred to as rules for life-saving appliances) with respect to all or any of the following matters—

(a) the arranging of ships into classes, having regard to the services in which they are employed, to the nature and duration of the voyage and to the number of persons carried;

(b) the number, description and mode of construction of the boats, life-rafts, line-throwing appliances, life-jackets and lifebuoys to be carried by ships according to the classes in which the ships are arranged;

(c) the equipment to be carried by any such boats and rafts and the methods to be provided to get into the water the boats and other life-saving appliances, including oil for use in stormy weather;

(d) the provision in ships of a proper supply of lights inextinguishable in water, and fitted for attachment to lifebuoys;

(e) the quantity, quality and description of buoyant apparatus to be carried on board ships carrying passengers, either in addition to or in substitution for boats, life-rafts, life-jackets and lifebuoys;

(f) the position and means of securing the boats, life-rafts, life-jackets, lifebuoys and buoyant apparatus;

(g) the marking of the boats, life-rafts and buoyant apparatus so as to show their dimensions and the number of persons authorised to be carried on them;

(h) the manning of the lifeboats and the qualifications and certificates of lifeboatmen;

(j) the provision to be made for mustering the persons on board, and for embarking them in the boats (including provision for the lighting of, and the means of ingress to and egress from, different parts of the ship);

(k) the provision of suitable means situated outside the engine-room whereby any discharge of water into the boats can be prevented;

(l) the assignment of specific duties to each member of the crew in the event of emergency;

(m) the methods to be adopted and the appliances to be carried in ships for the prevention, detection and extinction of fire;

(n) the practice in ships of boat-drills and fire-drills;

(o) the provision in ships of means of making effective distress-signals by day and by night;

(p) the provision in ships engaged on voyages in which pilots are likely to be embarked, of suitable pilot-ladders and of ropes, lights and other appliances designed to make the use of such ladders safe, and

(q) the examination at intervals to be prescribed by the rules of any appliances or equipment required by the rules to be carried.

(2) This section applies to ships registered in the State and to any other ship while she is within any port in the State, unless she would not have been in any such port but for stress of weather or any other circumstance that neither the master nor the owner nor the charterer (if any) of the ship could have prevented or forestalled.”

(2) The rules for life-saving appliances shall include such requirements as appear to the Minister to implement the provisions of the Safety Convention relating to the matters mentioned in the said substituted section 427.