A bad pilot forfeited his head.
The twenty-third clause was a frightful instance, copied from the so-called Rhodian laws,[540] of barbarous legislation. It enacted that if a pilot, or “lockman,”[541] for such was the term applied to harbour pilots, undertook to carry a vessel into port, and the vessel miscarried through his ignorance, and he had no means to make good the damage, or otherwise render full satisfaction, he was condemned to lose his head.[542] While the twenty-fourth clause actually gave the master, or any of the mariners, or merchants on board, power to cut off the head of the offender without being bound in law to answer for it; they were only required to be very certain that the unlucky lockman who was hired at every river to guide the ship, in order to avoid rocks, shelves, shoals, and sand-banks, had not wherewith to make pecuniary satisfaction.
Punishments.
The twenty-fifth clause aimed at altering “the unreasonable and accursed custom” of lords of the coast, where a vessel was wrecked, claiming and seizing the third or fourth part of the ship, leaving only the remainder to the master, the merchant, and the mariners. “Therefore, all pilots who, in connivance with the lords on the coast,” or to ingratiate themselves with such nobles, ran the ship on shore, were doomed to a most rigorous and unmerciful death on “high gibbets near the place where these accursed pilots brought the ship to ruin, which said gibbets are to abide and remain to succeeding ages on that place, as a visible caution to other vessels that sail thereby.” The lords or others, who took away any of the goods, were also declared to be “accursed,” and were frequently punished as “robbers and thieves.” Indeed the twenty-sixth clause declared that, “If the lord of the place be so barbarous as not only to permit such inhuman people, but also to maintain and assist them in such villanies, so that he may have a share in such wrecks, the said lord shall be apprehended, and all his goods confiscated and sold, in order to make restitution to the parties, and himself be fastened to a post or stake in the midst of his own mansion-house, which being fired at the four corners, all shall be burned together; the walls thereof shall be demolished, the stones pulled down, and the place converted into a marketplace for the sale of hogs and swine only, to all posterity.”[543]
The frightful severity of this punishment was adopted to stop even greater barbarities inflicted upon wrecked mariners, in addition to the plundering of the ship and cargo. Neither the Gauls nor Britons hesitated to sacrifice strangers cast on their shores; and, unfortunately, the piracies of the Scandinavians and the Normans had the effect of perpetuating this sanguinary custom. Foreigners cast on shore were too frequently immediately despatched, and the right of plundering a wrecked ship extended alike to friend and foe. The execution of pirates, and such as were condemned for crimes committed on the high seas, and their being left to hang in chains by the water side, has survived in practice even to the present century.
Clause twenty-seven relates to the adjustment of losses by any accident resulting from an inferior outfit, and stipulates that when a vessel arrived at her port of discharge, she was to be hauled up on dry ground, the sails taken down, and everything properly stowed away; and that then the master ought to consider an increase of wages, “kenning by kenning.”[544]
Shares in fishing vessels.
The twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth clauses adjust the respective shares of fishing vessels, when several were working in partnership, and provide that in the case of the loss of one vessel, the representatives of the parties who had perished could claim their quota of the fish caught as well as of the fishing instruments. They further relate to the salvage of shipwrecked vessels, in which the right of all shipwrecked persons to their goods is fully maintained; and refer to derelict ships and goods whose owners have been drowned, stipulating that such goods be kept a year, and if not claimed in that time be vested in the Church under certain conditions.
Wreckers.
The thirty-first clause provides that any wreckers who plundered a ship, or who, “more barbarous, cruel, and inhuman than mad dogs, did sometimes, to gain their apparel, monies or goods, murder and destroy poor distressed seamen; in this case, the lord of the country ought to execute justice on such wretches, to punish corporally as well as pecuniarily, to plunge them in the sea till they be half dead, and then to have them drawn from the sea and stoned to death.”