Britain: An official handbook > 1959

TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
341
Radio officers are required to hold certificates of proficiency in wireless tele¬
graphy issued by the Postmaster General on the results of an open examination.
All boys who wish to join the Merchant Navy as deck or junior catering ratings
must undergo a course of pre-sea training. The majority receive their training at
the National Sea Training Schools but courses are also provided by certain private
organisations and by a number of local education authorities.
A seaman may not be rated as A.B. (Able Seaman) in United Kingdom registered
ships unless he holds a certificate of competency as A.B., granted by the Ministry
of Transport and Civil Aviation, or an equivalent certificate. To obtain this certi¬
ficate a seaman must, among other qualifications, have served three years at sea on
deck, have attained a certificate of proficiency as lifeboatman and have passed a
qualifying examination.
Seamen qualify by seniority for promotion to the rating of petty officer. Service
as a deck rating qualifies for the purpose of admission to the examination for a
second mate’s certificate.
Conditions of Employment and Welfare
Wages and conditions of employment are negotiated by the National Maritime
Board (see p. 338). Minimum wages and holidays with pay are guaranteed for both
officers and ratings. Moreover, the Merchant Navy Established Service Scheme,
introduced by the Board in 1947, has removed a great deal of the uncertainty
formerly associated with a seafaring life. Officers and men can now take two-year
contracts, not only with individual shipping companies but with the industry as a
whole, and get special benefits, in addition to the normal unemployment insurance
benefit when they are ashore between voyages.
The Merchant Navy Welfare Board, on which are represented officers’ and
seamen’s unions and associations, shipowners, voluntary societies, the Ministries
of Transport and Civil Aviation, Labour and National Service, Pensions and
National Insurance, and the Colonial Office, has been responsible since 1948 for
the control and co-ordination of the welfare services for merchant seamen in the
United Kingdom and of British merchant seamen abroad.
PORTS
There are over 300 ports in the United Kingdom. The eleven largest are shown
in Table 24, which lists them in order of tonnage of shipping arriving and depart¬
ing and does not relate to the volume of cargo handled. Most ports, other than
those owned by the British Transport Commission, are represented on the Dock
and Harbour Authorities' Association, formed in 1917 to represent the common
interests of port authorities in their relations with Government, shipowners and
traders.
The Port of London, with 69 miles of waterway and over 4,000 acres of dock
estate, is the largest port in the Commonwealth, and with New York and Rotterdam
is one of the three largest ports in the world. Goods of every imaginable kind, from
meat to marble, from plywood to perfume, pass through the docks. Imports are
distributed all over the United Kingdom, though the port supplies, primarily.
Greater London and the Home Counties.
Liverpool—with Manchester, an inland city made into a port by the construction
of the Manchester Ship Canal—serves the industrial Midlands, Lancashire and
Yorkshire. Grain is prominent among the imports of Liverpool, which, including
Birkenhead on the opposite bank of the Mersey, is the second largest milling centre
in the world. Tobacco is another major import and is stored in what is probably the