It was a "chartered
allowance" made to foreign-built iron or steel steamers manned under the
French flag for long voyages or for international coastwise trade, of
more than 100 gross tons, belonging to French private persons or
joint-stock or other companies, the latter having on their boards a
majority of French citizens, and the chairman and managers being French.
This allowance was reckoned on the gross tonnage, and per day while the
steamer was in actual commission (three hundred days the maximum number
in any one year).[BX] The rate varied according to the tonnage. Up to
2000 tons gross, it was fixed at five centimes per ton; from 2000 to
3000 tons, at four centimes; 3000 to 4000, three centimes; above 4000,
two centimes; over 7000, the same grant as 7000. The creation of this
"chartered allowance," as Professor Viallates explains, was to prevent
the navigation bounty from becoming to the same extent as under the
previous law merely another form of bounty upon shipbuilding. It could
so become, he points out, only to the extent of which it exceeded the
owner's bounty.[BZ]
Not all of the shipping and navigation bounties were to go to
shipowners. Five per cent was to be retained for sailors' insurance
"with a view to reducing the deductions imposed on them for the purpose
of that insurance"; and six per cent to be reserved for distribution for
the benefit of marines, as follows: "two-thirds to the provident fund,
with a view to diminishing the deductions on mariners' pay and to
increasing the funds for assisting the victims of shipwreck and other
accidents, or their families; one-third to the invalids' fund, with a
view to granting subventions to the chambers of commerce or public
institutions for the creation and support of sailors' homes in French
ports, intended to assist the nautical population, or of any other
institutions likely to be of use to them, especially schools for
seamen.
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