Merchant Shipping (Safety and Load Line Conventions) Act 1932

44 Submersion of load line.

(1) A British load line ship registered in the United Kingdom shall not be so loaded as to submerge in salt water, when the ship has no list, the appropriate load line on each side of the ship, that is to say, the load line indicating or purporting to indicate the maximum depth to which the ship is for the time being entitled under the load line rules to be loaded,

(2) If any such ship is loaded in contravention of this section, the owner or master of the ship shall for each offence be liable to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds and to such additional fine, not exceeding the amount hereinafter specified, as the court thinks fit to impose having regard to the extent to which the earning capacity of the ship was, or would have been, increased by reason of the submersion.

(3) The said additional fine shall not exceed one hundred pounds for every inch or fraction of an inch by which the appropriate load line on each side of the ship was submerged, or would have been submerged if the ship had been in salt water and had had no list.

(4) In any proceedings against an owner or master in respect of a contravention of this section, it shall be a good defence to prove that the contravention was due solely to deviation or delay, being deviation or delay caused solely by stress of weather or other circumstances which neither the master nor the owner nor the charterer (if any) could have prevented or forestalled.

(5) Without prejudice to any proceedings under the foregoing provisions of this section, any ship which is loaded in contravention of this section maybe detained until she ceases to be so loaded.