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CHAPTER XI, 
recommendations took sufficient account of the desire of many seamen 
to spend between voyages comparatively long periods in their villages 
and their value as a check to unemployment was further weakened by 
the encouragement which the roster system would have given to the 
old and the inefficient seamen to remain on the waiting list. But when 
the Committee's recommendations were rejected as impracticable, the 
importance of ensuring that the system adopted should operate to reduce 
unemployment seems to have been overlooked. With one exception, 
the steps taken in the last few years have not been calculated to have this 
effect, and the problem to-day is as serious as it was in 1922. In Bombay, 
according to the estimate of the Indian Seamen’s Union, which appears 
to be approximately correct, there is employment at any one time for 
only one-third of the number available for employment. In the Ship- 
ping Office we found a number of serangs and butlers who, in spite of their 
previous satisfactory service, had been out of employment for periods 
varying from one to four years. The Shipping Master informed us that 
he had no control over new recruits whose names were being entered in 
the register, even though it was certain that no employment would be 
available for the majority of them for a considerable time. 
Position in Calcutta. 
In Calcutta the position is equally unsatisfactory. According 
bo the estimate of the Shipping Master, only about one-fourth of the 
total number seeking employment can hope to be successful. Here too 
there was for long the same indiscriminate registration of new recruits. 
From the 1st July 1922 to the end of 1925 over 29,500 new men were 
granted certificates to enable them to go to sea, while the number of those 
who succeeded in obtaining employment at sea during these years was 
less than 16,000. The position would have been even worse but for the 
fact that from 1926 the Shipping Master, on his own authority, stopped 
further registration of new recruits, except at the request of the officers 
of the ships on whose articles they were to be signed on. As a result of 
this action, the number of new men registered in the course of a year has 
fallen from 10,000 to about 5,000. An attempt has been made at Calcutta 
to construct a register of seamen, presumably in order to ascertain 
the numbers available and possibly to facilitate employment by roster. 
But the register in its present form is unwieldy and of questionable 
value; it includes the names of seamen who entered service as early 
as 1887, many of whom are now dead or have voluntarily retired 
from sea service. The Shipping Master declared that he had no autho- 
rity to remove a name from the register and that his instructions 
were to register all seamen. As a result he had perforce inserted the 
names of men who had been out of employment for periods extending 
to 15 and 16 years and who were obviously unfitted for further sea 
service 
Principle of Rotation. 
The problem has been aggravated by the tendency to concede 
he demand that seamen should be employed in rotation in order to