The laws regulating the manners and morals of seamen were frequently very severe. Moncenigo,[715] in 1420, punished with flogging every man guilty of blasphemy, or even of swearing, and inflicted a penalty of one hundred sous on any sailor of the poop, any steersman, officer, or gentleman, who was guilty of the like offence. The Norman code ordered the sailor guilty of robbery to have his head shaved, and then to be tarred and feathered. In this state he was made to pass through the crew ranged in two files, and each man struck him a blow with a stick or a stone, after which he was dismissed the ship.
In conformity with the earlier laws, Peter III., of Aragon, passed in 1354 an ordinance condemning every man to run the gauntlet who gambled with his effects. In certain cases the admiral of a fleet could cut the delinquent’s ears off for a similar offence; and he had even the power also to cut out his tongue, if, for example, any unhappy culprit should insult or menace the master or captain. In the commencement of the fourteenth century, the Catalonian law inflicted the punishment of chopping off the hand of any man who cut the cable of the ship malignantly. In 1397, at Ancona, any sailor who abandoned a ship when wrecked, before she was stranded, lost his right hand.
But when the mutilation of members was found to be injudicious, for “afterwards a man was good for nothing,” this punishment was removed from the law of Catalonia passed in the year 1354. The ordinance, however, inflicting the loss of the tongue and the ears, and running the gauntlet of sticks and stones along the deck, was not abrogated for some centuries, whilst hanging a man at the yard-arm was for the first time introduced. The laws of the North, terribly severe in the case of a sailor who struck with a knife at the master of a ship, or who merely raised any arms against him, enacted that the offender should have his hand fastened to the mast with the knife which he had used, so that he could only liberate himself by tearing away his own hand by main force, leaving a portion of the member adhering to the mast. Any quarrels among the sailors at Genoa which led to loss of life were rigorously punished, and almost invariably with death. Pilots were most severely dealt with. If any one of them had engaged to carry a vessel into a harbour on the penalty of losing his head, he was decapitated if he failed to do so; in the case of shipwreck he was liable to a similar punishment, unless, indeed, he was rich enough to pay for the loss occasioned by his ignorance and carelessness. Sometimes a man, who cut the cable maliciously so as to cause the loss of the ship confided to his care, was punished by being impaled.[716]
Impaling, flogging, &c.
But the pale, the whip, the cat-o’-nine tails, the mutilation of members, the cutting out the tongue, the death by the axe or by a punishment like the gibbet, were not the only chastisements inflicted on mariners who were guilty of crime. Immersion in the water, repeated three times successively, was one more commonly inflicted than any other; and when, in the twelfth century, it was first used by the English, it received the name of keel-hauling; and cale (keel) by the French, who inflicted it upon any sailor who used his knife in an assault. At Marseilles three sailors were punished with keel-hauling, who, in a joke, swore by the name of God or by that of any of the saints.[717] Wreckers were punished with great severity by most, if not all, the Mediterranean nations during the Middle Ages. If any person, instead of aiding a ship in peril on a coast, endeavoured to plunder her, and killed or wounded any one on board with a view to robbery, the offenders were upon discovery hurled into the sea, and when taken out half dead were stoned to death, “just as a wolf should be stoned to death.”
Branding.
The brand was one of the most ignominious punishments which Venice applied in the thirteenth century. By an enactment of 1232, any seaman who had received advances on any part of his wages whatever by anticipation, and did not fulfil his engagement, was enjoined forthwith to reimburse twice the amount he had received, and was liable to be flogged and branded on his forehead; while a law of the Hanseatic League, renewed in 1418, 1447, and 1597, inflicted the punishment of slitting the ears of any sailor who deserted the master of his ship in time of danger.[718]
The penal statutes of the Christian countries of the Mediterranean forbade, as already explained, any sale of arms or of ships to the Saracens. Persons who violated this enactment were sometimes “hung by the throat,” in the terms of the law of Jerusalem. The most lenient punishment, the dispossession of everything the delinquent had in the world and his exposure on the staircase of the tribunal to the public execration,[719] allowed for selling a ship to the infidels, and thereby “wronging the republics two-fold,” was by the statute of Venice of 1232 adopted in principle, if not in all its details, by other Christian countries. But in spite of these stringent laws the Venetians, as already shown, if they did not sell ships or arms to the Saracens, traded with them in other merchandise whenever it suited their purpose. A similar humiliating exposure was inflicted on any pilot or steersman, who, through negligence, had caused the ship under his charge to be boarded, and thus to sustain serious damage or loss. In this case, however, instead of being exposed upon the staircase of the tribunal, the unfortunate offender was obliged, after the confiscation of his property, to sit for six hours upon a cask in a public thoroughfare, in the short dress worn by culprits, with his feet naked, and holding in his hands a helm, amidst the laughter and scorn of the populace.
FOOTNOTES:
[685] F. Steinitz, “The Ship: its origin and progress,” p. 101.