The 1867 Merchant Shipping Amendment Act is well known as a major nineteenth century statute aimed at improving the health, safety and comfort of British merchants seafarers. But maritime historians are less familiar with the extra-parliamentary committee which paved the way for this reform. Its tactics were not those of self-publicity, such as the flamboyant Samuel Plimsoll was to adopt a few years later, and this may account for its comparative neglect, but the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of Merchant Seamen exercised a timely and critical influence on the development of seafarers’ welfare legislation. For this reason alone its work merits wider knowledge. A report issued by the Society in April 1867 stands in its own right as a valuable contemporary statement of mid-Victorian opinion on merchant shipping and seamen. As a programme for reform published shortly before the Merchant Shipping Amendment Bill was drawn up, the report is additionally significant, particularly when measured against the legislation eventually enacted. Furthermore, the Society's existence and activity was very much in keeping with the spirit and practice of the times - for although it concentrated on seamen and safety at sea, the Society's involvement with issues such as diet, health, accommodation, labour contracts and the role of government mirrored the approach and interests of other social reform groups in the mid-nineteenth century. In all these respects an examination of the Society, besides promoting an understanding of attitudes to seamen and reform, demonstrates the importance of setting studies of maritime themes in the broader context of economic, political and social change.

The Society was formed at a “meeting of gentlemen interested in the condition of merchant seamen” held on 27 February 1867 in the rooms of the Social Science Association in London. Most of the tewnty-nine participants were professionally connected with the sea, but otherwise their interests and backgrounds were diverse. All however were united in the belief that an organized society would carry more weight than individual initiatives. Captain Henry Toynbee, a leading light in the Society, was a retired master mariner with thirty-five years sea-going experience and an established reputation as an influential writer on the merchant marine; its chairman, Admiral A.P. Ryder, had served as a commissioner on the Inquiry into the State of the Navigation Schools and was a staunch advocate of better training for seamen.