OF all trades, seafaring ever required a special governance, a unique Code of Laws, suited to the seaman's isolation from tribunal and land court, to the circumstance of his constant voyaging. On sea, the severance from ordered government, from reward as from penalty, was irremediable and complete. No common law or enactment could be enforced on the wandering sea-tribesmen who owned no settled domicile, who responded only to the weight of a stronger arm than their own, who had an impenetrable cloak to their doings in the mystery of distant seas. The spirit and high heart that had called them to the dangers and vicissitudes of a sea-life would not brook tamely the dominance and injunction of a power whose authority was, at sea, invisible—and even under the land, could carry but little distance beyond high-water mark. To the bold self-enterprise of the early sea-venturers, the unconfined ocean offered a free field for a standard of strength, for a law of might alone. Kings and Princes might rule the boundaries of the land, but the sea was for those who could maintain a holding on the troubled waters. Were the 'Rectores' not Kings on their own heaving decks, their province the round of the horizon, their subjects the vulgar 'shippe-men,' their slaves the unfortunate weaker seafarers, whom chance or the fickle winds had brought within reach of their sea-arms? The sea-rovers were difficult to bridle or restrain. Spurlos versenkt might well have been their motto—as that of later pirates. No trace! The sea would tell no tales. They were alone on the breadth of the ocean, no ordered protection was within hail, the land lay distant under rim of the sea-line. Blue water would wash over the face of robbery and crime: the hazards of the sea could well account for a missing ship!
Reverse the setting and the same uncharity could similarly be masked. In turn, the humanity the seamen contemned was denied to them. Driven on shore, wrecked or foundered on coast or shoal, the laws they scorned were powerless to shield or salve the wreckage of their vessels, to save their weary sea-scarred bodies. 'No trace' was equally a motto for the dwellers on the coast: blue water would wash as freely over their bloody evidence, the miserable castaways could be as readily returned to the pitiless sea: an equal hazard of the deep could as surely account for missing men!
Only special measures could control a situation of such a desperate nature, no ordinary governance could effect a settlement; no one but a powerful and kingly seafarer could frame an adjustment and post wardens to enforce a law for the sea. When Richard Cœur de Lion established our first Maritime Code, he had his own rude sea-experience to guide him. On perilous voyaging to the Holy Land, he must have given more than passing thought to the trials and dangers of his rough mariners. Sharing their sea-life and its hardships, he noted the ship-measures and rude sea-justice with a discerning and humane appreciation. In all the records of our law-making there are few such intimate revelations of a minute understanding as his Rôles d'Oléron. The practice of to-day reflects no small measure of his wisdom; in their basic principles, his charges still tincture the complex fabric of our modern Sea Codes. Bottomry—the pledging of ship and tackle to procure funds for provision or repair; salvage—a just and reasonable apportionment; jettison—the sharing of another's loss for a common good; damage to ship or cargo—the account of liability: many of his ordinances stand unaltered in substance, if varied and amplified in detail.
The spirit of these mediæval Shipping Acts was devoted as well to restrain the lawless doings of the seamen as to check the inhuman plunderings of the coast dwellers. The rights and duties of master and man were clearly defined: in the schedule of penalties, the master's forfeit was enhanced, as his was assumed to be the better intelligence. For barratry and major sea-crimes, the penalty was death and dismemberment. All pilots who wrecked their charges for benefit of the lords of the sea-coast were to be hung on a gibbet, and so exhibited to all men, near the spot where the vessels they had misdirected were come on shore. The lord of the foreshore who connived at their acts was to suffer a dire fate. He was to be burned on a stake at his own hearthstone, the walls of his mansion to be razed, and the standing turned to a market-place for barter of swine! Drastic punishment! Doubtless kingly Richard drew abhorrence for the wrecker from his own bitter experience on the inhospitable rocky coast of Istria!
Little detail has come down to us of the means adopted to enforce these just acts. Of the difficulties of their enforcement we may judge a little from the character of the seamen as presented by contemporary chronicles. . . .
"Full many a draught of wyn had he drawe
From Burdeux-ward, whil that the chapman sleep.
Of nyce conscience took he no keep.
If that he foughte, and hadde the heigher hand,
By water he sent hem hoom to every land."
. . . Thus Chaucer; but Chaucer was a Collector of Customs, and would possibly assess the stolen draught of Bordeaux as a greater crime than throwing prisoners overboard! From evidence of the date, Richard's shipping laws seem to have been but lightly regarded by the lords of the foreshore. In the reign of King John, wrecking had become a practice so common that prescriptive rights to the litter of the beaches was included in manorial charters, despite the Rôle that . . . "the pieces of the ship still to belong to the original owners, notwithstanding any custom to the contrary . . . and any participators of the said wrecks, whether they be bishops, prelates, or clerks, shall be deposed and deprived of their benefices, and if lay people they are to incur the penalties previously recited."
It was surely by more than mere chance the churchmen were thus specially indicted! Perhaps it was by a temporal as well as a spiritual measure that Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, strove to remove a reproach to the Church. He founded a Guild of sea-samaritans, a Corporation
"of godly disposed men, who, for the actual suppression of evil disposed persons bringing ships to destruction by the shewing forth of false beacons, do bind themselves together in the Love of our Lord Christ, in the name of the Masters and Fellows of Trinity Guild to succour from the dangers of the sea all who are beset upon the coasts of England, to feed them when ahungered and athirst, to bind up their wounds, and to build and light proper beacons for the guidance of mariners."
An earnest and compassionate Charter: a merciful and honourable Commission.