Section 36

Every erasure, interlineation or alteration in any agreement with the crew, except additions made for the purpose of shipping substitutes or persons engaged after the first departure of the ship, shall be wholly inoperative unless proved to have been made with the consent of all the persons interested in the erasure, interlineation or alteration by the written attestation, if in Her Majesty’s dominions, of some port officer, superintendent, justice, officer of customs or other public functionary, or elsewhere of a British consular officer, or where there is no such officer of two respectable British merchants.[49