Bob Couttie’s Maritime Accident Casebook

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…They should be thankful they weren’t working at the time of the Hanseatic League, a sort of precursor to the European Union. Philippe Boisson of Bureau Veritas has this to say of the times when ships were made of wood and men were made of iron:

“The Sea Laws of Oleron mention very stringent penalties for anyone failing in his duty. The captain, who exercised absolute authority on board, was empowered to cut off the luckless pilot’s head if by ignorance he had endangered the cargo and the crew.”

The original, at least in English translation, gives a taste of the times: “If a pilot undertakes the conduct of a vessel, to bring her to St. Malo, or any other port, and fail of his duty therein, so as the vessel miscarry by reason of his ignorance in what he undertook, and the merchants sustain damage thereby, he shall be obliged to make full satisfaction for the same, if he hath wherewithal; and if not, lose his head... And if the master, or any one of his mariners, or any one of the merchants, cut off his head, they shall not be bound to answer for it; but before they do it, they must be sure he had not herewith to make satisfaction.”

No mention of VTS operators, though.

As probably the first set of maritime laws the Sea Laws of Oleron, an island off the coast of France, make interesting reading. You won’t find anything like this in your PSSR course: “if any of the mariners impudently contradict the master, he also ought to pay eight deniers; and if the master strike any of the mariners, he ought to bear with the first stroke, be it with the fist or open hand; but if the master strikes him more than one blow, the mariner may defend himself but if the said mariner doth first assault the master, he ought to pay five sols, or lose his hand.”

Gives a whole new meaning to ‘deckhand’.

But back to pilots. In those days, it seems, it was not unusual for pilots to deliberately wreck vessels in connivance with a local lord and a very special series of punishments was in store for anyone involved: “…all false and treacherous pilots shall be condemned to suffer a most rigorous and unmerciful death; and high gibbets shall be erected for them in the same place, or as high as conveniently may be, where they so guided and brought any ship or vessel to ruin as aforesaid, and thereon these accursed pilots are with ignominy and much shame to end their days; which said gibbets are to abide and remain to succeeding ages on that place, as a visible caution to other ships that shall afterwards sail thereby.”

As for the lord himself: “….the said lord shall be apprehended, and all his goods confiscated and sold, in order to make restitution to such as of right it appertaineth; and himself to 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 burnt together, the walls thereof shall be demolished, the stones pulled down, and the place converted into a market place for the sale only of hogs and swine to all posterity.”

The old ways were the best ways.