Jetsam and flotsam.
The thirty-second to the thirty-sixth articles inclusive refer to the laws of jetsam and flotsam, and provide that goods thrown overboard to preserve the ship and cargo do not change their proprietorship. Whilst the thirty-seventh clause relates to strays of the sea, such as whales[545] and other oil-fish, stipulating that if a man on horseback could reach the stray with his lance it was deemed a royalty belonging to the lord. But if the fish was found farther off the shore, the lord had no right to it, though afterwards brought or driven on shore.
Royal fish.
The five clauses which followed regulated the prevailing customs relating to sturgeon, salmon, turbot, the sea dragon, the sea barbel, and in general all fish fit for a king’s table; besides oil-fish such as whales, and porpoises, or of any fish of which oil could be made, and in which the lord had a title to a share. All other fish were declared to be the property of those who caught them in the sea, whether in deep or shallow waters; whilst the forty-third and forty-fourth clauses adjusted the title to goods which had become derelict. The forty-fifth provided that a vessel cutting her cables and putting to sea through stress of weather was entitled to recover their value. Buoys were directed to be placed over the anchors, and any person detaining them from the lawful owners was to be reputed as “a thief and a robber.”
Timber of wrecks.
The forty-sixth and forty-seventh articles applied to the timber of wrecks, when the crew were lost and had perished. The pieces of the ship were declared to belong to the owners, notwithstanding any custom to the contrary. “And any participators of the said wreck, whether bishops, prelates, or clerks, shall be deposed and deprived of their benefices respectively.” If they were laymen, they incurred the penalties previously recited.
Remarks on these laws.
Whatever opinion may be entertained of the barbarous character of the punishments enforced by these laws, it is undeniable that they are framed in a spirit of wisdom and justice towards the ship-owner. The lawless spirit of piracy, prevailing along the coasts in the time of Richard I., rendered it absolutely necessary, if a merchant navy was desirable, to protect the ships and the mariners, as well as the goods in them, by the stern authority of the civil law. The experience that Richard had acquired in sea affairs during his voyage to the Holy Land, made him sensible of the necessity of introducing into England the most salutary maritime regulations in force abroad. Accordingly the above code, of which we have furnished only a brief abstract, was established by him, or shortly after his death, to afford protection to those persons and interests, on which he saw clearly the commercial prosperity of England in great measure depended.
Code of Wisby.
At a later period, the merchants of Wisby[546] framed their laws on the Rôles d’Oleron, which became, in fact, during the succeeding century and subsequently, the authoritative rule for deciding all maritime controversies not only in the Hanse Towns, but among all nations on the Baltic Sea. Further, it was declared by the forty-first article of Magna Charta, A.D. 1215, “that all merchants shall have safe conduct to go out of or come into England, and to stay there. To pass either by land or by water, and to buy and sell by the ancient and allowed customs without any civil tolls (an excessive tax on sales), except in time of war, or when there shall happen to be any nation at war with us.”