99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-33- A Cheer for Samuel Plimsoll

Episode Date: August 5, 2011

If you look at the outer hull of commercial ships, you might find a painted circle bisected with a long horizontal line. This marking is called the load line, or as I prefer, the Plimsoll line. This simple graphic design … Continue reading →

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The simple marking is called the load line, or as I prefer, the plimso line. And not to oversell it, but this elegant graphic design has saved thousands of lives. This is one of my favorite examples of design because what I really like in the world is when you can find a massive problem that definitely needs solving and with some thought you can solve it with something as simple as a circle with a line for it. It's just find it amazing. That's what I'd like to do with my career.

That's Tristan Cook. And I make human factors engineer so that means that I look at the way that people interact with their environment and figure out how that will affect their behavior. Tristan also curates an outstanding blog called Humans in Design. So anyway, the massive problem that needed solving in the 19th century that Tristan is referring to was the huge number of British ships sinking in the ocean because they were overloaded and in disrepair, sending hundreds of merchant seamen to a watery grave. The problem was so widespread that these vessels became known by another name.

Coffin ships? Coffin ships. Now overloading ships has certainly happened since their have been ships to overload, but it was the introduction of insurance that created the Coffin ship. It's still a colloquial term for ships that are over-insured, so they worth more money to the person that owns them at the bottom of the ocean and they are a float. So ship owners would purposefully overload older ships with cargo, thinking that if the ships made it, they hit the jackpot. But if the ships didn't make it, they still made a lot of money on the insurance claim.

Early days in insurance, so people weren't quite aware of the idea that by ensuring something you're going to change and affect people's behavior. This is called a moral hazard when people engage in risky behavior because they are not fully accountable for the consequences. You'd assume that insurance is going to keep everything the same, but it doesn't. When something is insured, it changes your behavior, you become more risky, or you have a different incentive to do something. And the unintended consequence of insurance was that ship owners had an incentive to sink their

own ships and send hundreds of souls to the bottom of the ocean. The most famous one was one called the SS London. It had 230 something people on board. It was leaving a place and I'm not kidding, called Graves End in England, theoretically headed for Melbourne, Australia. But it was overloaded with a whole bunch of railway parts and things like that. And that was in the mid-1800s and that sank as in a storm like when it tried to turn back towards a port. This is where our hero, British MP Samuel Plimpsol and the Plimpsol line comes in. Just after that happened, a guy called Samuel Plimpsol, and the Plimpsol line comes in. Just after that happened, a guy called Samuel Plimpsol got elected to the British Parliament, and he wanted to pass a bunch of new shipping safety laws based upon his knowledge of this

disaster. But passing these safety laws was not easy for Plimpsol because it just so happens that murderous, regulation- regulation hating immoral capitalists and their friends sometimes serve as elected officials. A lot of the people in British Parliament owned ships so they were the owners that didn't want extra regulation so yeah here it had actually a fairly large amount of trouble getting it through. It didn't sail through it had very little support in Parliament.

So Plum Sol took his case to the people. Plimzel wrote a book called Our Seaman, which it was really championed the issue, and that went really wide. And eventually due to widespread public support, the merchant shipping act of 1876 was passed. It required the simple, elegant graphic I described earlier, a circle with a long horizontal line at the center, to be painted on the outside of the hall to show the maximum loading point of the ship. The mark let a third party know plainly and clearly when of us was being overloaded and at risk of sinking in rough seas.

If you see that horizontal line above the water, you're good, and if you don't, well, you could be sunk. It's kind of really pretty looking to look at. That's what drew me to it initially. It's very geometric. And some form of the plums online remains on ships to this day. There's just a slight modification

so that in different waters or saltwater or fresh water or with different sorts of ships, you're allowed to load it to different levels. So there's just a couple of different levels on the outside. Personally, I think it's amazing that with Boats Seas days, that there's all these different safety measures that have been implemented. There's GPS, the Boats drive themselves halfway through everywhere, but when it gets down to it, the thing that is most importantly, keeping a boat afloat, is still just a circle with a line through it

on its hull, just a bit of paint. There have been numerous poems and songs sung about Samuel Plumsol, but over time his name has faded even though his mark on the world lives on. It's actually less known as a Plumsol line now, or more as a low line, but at the time it was definitely known as a Plumsol line. But if I've done my job today, you dear listener, will only call it a Plim Soul Line because it seems like the right and honorable thing. And besides, if there's an opportunity to use an eponym, use the eponym, it's just cooler. Our tar is upon the ocean, he struggles to defend. Success the Samuel Plimself, for he is the sailor's friend.

99% of visible was produced this week by me, Roman Mars, with help from Tristan Cook and Tom Nelson, who curate the blog Humans in Design. This program was made possible with support from Lunar, making a difference with creativity. It's a project of KALW 91.7 local public radio in San Francisco, the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco, and the Center for Architecture and Design. To find out more including a link to the blog, humans, and design, go to our website, it's 99% invisible.org. For a year, let's go nowhere If you stop, you'll end up somewhere In a minute, I need one second to jump down Everybody wants a quarter jump down

Everybody wants a quarter jump down Everybody just goes past You're a man's.