The Admiralty may from time to time provide life annuities for masters and seamen of the Mercantile Marine who contributed out of their wages the sum of sixpence per month towards the support of Greenwich Hospital, by the purchase of annuities for their lives and benefit from the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, under the Savings Banks Annuities Acts, being the Acts described in the schedule to this Act.
Annuities shall be purchased under this section for such persons only as are entitled to pensions under the regulations made by Order of Her Majesty in Council, under section twelve of The Greenwich Hospital Act, 1869, in force at the passing of this Act; and the amount of any annuity purchased for any person under this section shall not exceed the amount of pension to which the annuitant would be entitled under those regulations.
As soon as provision has been so made for all such pensions as aforesaid, the same being declared by Her Majesty in Council, the annual sum payable by the Admiralty to the Board of Trade for those pensions shall cease to be
Notwithstanding anything in the Savings Banks Annuities Acts, the amount of any annuity purchased under this section may be such as the Admiralty and the Commissioners for Reduction of the National Debt from time to time agree ; and subject thereto all the provisions of the Savings Banks Annuities Acts shall extend and apply to every such annuity.