Chapter III: The Mediterranean Mercantile Marine

It is fortunately possible to obtain from various sources an insight into life as it was endured in a mediæval Mediterranean merchant ship, and this will assist us considerably to form a sympathetic interest in the development which was going on towards the ideal craft that was to evolve five or six hundred years later.

On a tomb in a church at Milan, a Pisan artist named Balduccio in the year 1339 sculptured, fortunately for our knowledge, a merchant ship of his time, and we may regard her as typical alike of Venice, Genoa and Pisa. There is remarkably little difference in essentials between her and a Roman merchant ship of about A.D. 200: that is to say, the trading shipmen, having once found out a suitable type, stuck to it, just as to-day there is a more or less standard type of tramp steamer or steam trawler or steam drifter. Time had tested and given its approval. Thus in Balduccio’s illustration we have a round, beamy vessel not unlike the shape of a very fat banana, and with a stern sweeping up from the water-line not altogether unlike that of the so-called modern “cruiser stern.” The essential difference is that this stern culminates in two small decks—a stern-castle, in fact, and a forecastle, much smaller, overhanging the bows. There is also a fighting-top.

Although this is emphatically a cargo vessel, these castles and fighting-top are there for the reasons already indicated by existing conditions at sea, and in this elaborate castellation with even small galleries aft we have the half-way house between the earlier and later Mediterranean merchantman: between the cargo-carrier of Rome and the carack, which was to develop into the galleon, thence into the East Indiaman, and eventually into the glorious clippers of the late nineteenth century. Thus this Pisan ship is for us most interesting, and she still links herself to primitive times by the use of one single square-sail and the old-fashioned method of steering by means of a rudder, not aft, but on the quarter. It is controlled by a tiller, but supported by tackles fore and aft, for it is now as heavy as a Thames sailing barge’s leeboards.

Everything about this Pisan craft indicates that she was well and strongly built, and that expense was not spared. The elaborate work in her stern galleries, the influence of contemporary land architecture on her forecastle, the stout, thick rubbing strakes under which the ends of the beam come flush, the good strong rigging (three shrouds each side with tackles), the thick cable and the anchor secured to a shelf outside the hull on the starboard side—all these details show that the sculptor knew what he was depicting, and that the ship which he copied was a real sea-going vessel as used by genuine sailormen, and not the inaccurate muddled idea of an imaginative artist. The Pisans, the Venetians and Genoese were making plenty of money, and they could afford to send to sea a well-built, well-designed and well-found craft that would not cause the merchants to feel nervous about their valuable Eastern goods in the hold.

With a mental picture before us of this slow, beamy, stout ship, built specially for seaworthiness and capacity to carry goods, rather than to excel in mobility, we can continue our study, and we shall be able to learn a great deal of the conditions prevailing in the mediæval Merchant Service if we examine the legal literature of the time. For obvious reasons, when there was so much coming and going and so much money at stake, maritime law began to assert itself from about the seventh century A.D. onwards, until, about six centuries later, we have practically every contingency catered for. Between the eighth and the thirteenth centuries there was very little alteration in the ships, the navigation and the manner of sea-trading. The big change comes in the thirteenth century, when the commercial renaissance begins, which, thanks to these vessels, made the great literary and artistic renaissance possible, gave to the world the new learning, the golden age of art, and left behind those wonderful achievements in stone. The merchant ship, therefore, is the basis of all in life that we respect and venerate.

By 1255 Venice had its maritime law, though it was the old so-called Rhodian sea-law,[2] which inspired the regulating of the mediæval merchant ships all the time. The size of a ship was reckoned not in tons, but in _amphoræ_ or else in _modii_. An amphora represented about six gallons, a modios was the equivalent of about two gallons. Thus a ship with all her tackle was valued at fifty pieces of gold for every thousand modii of her capacity, though this was further varied according to her age. Port dues at Ancona, for instance, were calculated on the valuation of the ship.

Now it is necessary once more to think of the conditions of service afloat in those days as something quite different from those in our modern Mercantile Marines, where, in spite of trades unions, the captain is supreme and the crew simply carry out his orders, and the passengers have to go wherever he takes them. In those days there was, comparatively speaking, little knowledge of the sea except what was obtained by personal experience. Thus a much-travelled merchant who went backwards and forwards each year to the East would be almost as competent as the master of the ship. Similarly the crew. The result was—and it seems very strange to us moderns—that the ship was run not on a well-disciplined principle, as every one obeying blindly the master’s orders, but on a communal basis, backed up by the maritime law. Sometimes, it is true, the sailors were paid fixed wages, in which case they were also given their food; but frequently they undertook the voyage on a profit-sharing basis. Thus the master received two shares, the steersman one and a half, the master’s mate one and a half, the boatswain one and a half, while each sailor got a whole share, and the cook half a share. It was therefore to the interest of all to do everything to get the ship safely from port to port.

The little difference which existed between master, officers, men and merchants enabled them all in an emergency to offer their opinions as to weather, pilotage and so on, a decision being arrived at by the vote of the majority. All this sounds thoroughly unseamanlike to us, but that is because the seafaring art has long since become so perfect and systematised, and the division of labour recognised as a root essential. It was perfectly legal for the merchants, with their valuable goods on board, to insist on the ship being taken into a harbour, or to prevent her putting to sea notwithstanding all the protests of the _naukleros_ or shipmaster. The identity of ignorance among all on board, with the casting vote in favour of finance, bred chaos and ill-discipline, that had to be put down with a firm hand later on, as soon there arose competent navigators and specialists in seamanship; but the time had not yet come.

No one can possibly envy the life in a merchant ship of the Middle Ages, with every possible opportunity for friction and the captain not allowed a free hand. The passenger came on board in fear and trepidation, bringing with him his own bed and bed-coverings, which, as happened in 1278, for instance, were stolen from him occasionally. A proper cabin he could not have, the sleeping space permitted to him being three cubits long and one cubit wide. Under the Venetian statutes every merchant or mariner could take on board free one mattress; the former could also have one trunk, but this was not allowed to his servant. The passengers brought with them for the voyage all their food, wine, cooking utensils, and even their firewood, but there were special precautions taken to guard against fire, which was one of the eternal terrors in all ships even down to the nineteenth century. Thus there is a curious regulation preventing passengers in Venetian ships from frying fish, and another forbidding them to split wood. Water was supplied free both to passengers and crew, but this was controlled by measure, for economical reasons.

Arrived on board, the passenger would deposit his gold with the captain for safe keeping. He lived on biscuits, salt meat, vegetables, cheese, onions, garlic and vinegar, and there was a Barcelona ordinance of 1258 which compelled the shipowner to keep a supply of food to last fifteen days, and this was to include bread, wine, salt meat, vegetables, oil and water. As regards victualling, cargo ships found it easier than pilgrim ships, for the former could usually hug the shore and put into the land for provisions. Indeed it was one of the characteristics of a good pilot that he knew where the ship could obtain fresh drinking water.

The merchant, with his costly goods, out of which he hoped to make big profits, found himself in the company of rough mariners who were lacking the innocence of the carved saints in a cathedral. Thieving was going on all the time whenever there was a chance. Nowadays you sometimes hear one seaman describe another as so dishonest that he would steal the ship’s anchor if he could. It is an obvious exaggeration, but the expression was perfectly accurate in the times of which we are now speaking. There was a passage in the maritime law which dealt with this species of theft. Thus, it runs, if a ship not under way was robbed of her anchors, and the thief was caught and confessed, he was to be flogged and to make good twice the damage. Similarly, if a sailor robbed a merchant or the captain, he was to be punished, and there are penalties laid down against swearing, blasphemy and other vices.

In these wooden ships, which often “worked,” and had to go through heavy weather, the merchant would sometimes find his beautiful Oriental silks ruined; so there was a regulation that when the water began to rise in the hold the captain was to let the merchants know at once, so that they could bring their linens and silks up on deck. But apart from these risks there were those caused by bad seamanship, the attacks by pirates at sea or robbers in harbour, the evil men who did not hesitate to cut the cables of the visiting ship or waylay the merchants and crew as soon as they came ashore; and there were the wreckers who deliberately displayed false lights to lure the ship into destruction—surely one of the lowest of all maritime crimes that could be devised by the cunning of man.

It was laid down that if a ship “in sail” ran into another ship lying at anchor, or which had “slackened sail,” and it was during daylight, the damage was to be borne by the captain, by those on board and by the cargo. But if the incident occurred at night, the man who “slackened sail” should have lit a fire or have shouted. Be it remembered that these merchant ships, though the most seaworthy of any craft then in existence, were very unhandy and not always under control in narrow channels. It was impossible for any regulation of man to prevent them encountering bad weather and even experiencing shipwreck, but by laying these ships up in November, and not allowing them to sail until the following March, the authorities were following the wise custom which had been handed down since classical times, and embodied this practice in their law. Against the corsair who attacked the ships of his country’s enemies, and against the pirate who attacked every ship that came his way, there could be no absolute guarantee unless the ship was in a convoy escorted by armed galleys.

But these corsairs made no false pretence about their work, and when in 1165 the Pisans asked Trepedecinus, a well-known Genoese corsair, where he was going, he merely replied that he was going to capture them, their goods, their persons and cut off their noses. It was therefore not unusual to carry in these trading ships some men-at-arms with swords, shields and helmets. Thus, in a charter-party of 1236 there is laid down that there are to be twenty-five mariners on board, of whom ten are to be in armour. Quite apart from the convoy system, it was customary for two or more ships to voyage in company for mutual protection, the technical term for this being _conservagium_. It was an arrangement that was mutual also in quite another manner, for if one of the ships was sunk, the loss was spread among the others in the consort—a still further instance of the sharing-out principle which was so common at sea in these times.

Gradually, then, the Mercantile Marine had become indispensable to trade and to intellectual progress, but it was the growth of pilgrim traffic which made certain landsmen affluent; for now men called _cargatores_, or passenger agents, arranged the business of transporting these devout people across the sea, and therefore stringent regulations had to be passed to prevent the travellers from being fleeced. Thus the _cargatores_ were compelled to supply the pilgrims with good and adequate victuals; and, in order to prevent any bribery or corruption, they were forbidden to enter into partnership with the shipowner in regard to the food. Of course this was no small undertaking at a period of the world’s history when there were no such things as preserved meats or refrigerating chambers, especially when the ships were crowded with a lot of sea-sick landsmen who had never previously beheld the sea. All those who voyaged from Venice or Marseilles had to carry enough food to last them for fifty days, and in those rough ships and the Mediterranean climate you can imagine the state of the food at the end of seven weeks. No wonder that a pilgrimage was a real act of self-denial!

It was customary in classical times to give names to the Mediterranean ships, and this survived through the Middle Ages, where we find such names as _Urso_, _Oliva_, _Aquila_, _Christiana_, _Cidona_, _St. Blazius_. The Genoese ship went by the name of her shipmaster or owner. After she had been built and fitted out, the greatest care was taken to see that she was seaworthy and not overloaded. Thus the internal arrangements, the ballasting and stowing of goods in the hold were all supervised. The Venetian statutes kept a very tight control over their shipping, regulating the places where the cabins were to be put, where the sail locker should be, where the ship’s tackle was stored, and the sleeping arrangements both for the merchants and the sailors. No detail seems to have been too small for State supervision.

The stowing of the cargo in the hold was left to the discretion of the shipmaster, and there was a kind of Plimsoll mark used in these Venetian ships; for this is what happened. On the outside of the hull a mark was put, the ship was then loaded and examined officially before setting forth on her voyage, and she was not allowed to proceed to sea if this mark was more than a certain depth below the water-line, this depth varying according to the ship’s age. If the mark were submerged too much, a sufficient quantity of cargo had to be taken out until she came up to her marks, and then the owner was fined. This was the general rule, but exceptions were made in the case of craft sailing within the Venetian Gulf or carrying victuals.

The ballasting of the merchant ships was done either by the navigating officer or else under the direction of a committee composed of this officer and representatives of owners and merchants. But when once the vessel had been properly ballasted, it was forbidden to remove any ballast except for necessity in entering port, or with the consent of the merchants or committee, though certain heavy articles, such as lead, were permitted to be substituted for ballast. The heavy goods were, of course, placed as low as possible, though such articles as wrought silks and other light goods were allowed to be stowed on the upper deck, where also food, carpenter’s tools and armour could be placed.

The owner of the ship was also at times her master, but when the owner did not himself go to sea and himself appointed the master, he contracted to carry the passengers and cargo, purchased the tackle and engaged the seamen. Right down to Elizabethan times the navigation of the ship was not necessarily carried out by the captain, but by the pilot, though in the early days of Mediterranean merchant shipping the masters seem to have been navigators as well, or, more accurately, pilots. If the ship got wrecked there was, according to an old constitution of A.D. 380, a practice of obtaining the true facts of the incident in a manner far more drastic than a modern Board of Trade Inquiry; for certain members of the crew would be selected as witnesses, and they were then tortured until they should speak the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The communal idea even went to the length of having sometimes several skippers on the same ship, in order that no one should act without the consent of the others; and what with the interfering advice and remonstrances of the merchants and the not too disciplined crews, no mercantile officer of to-day would find mediæval seafaring endurable. The mariners could only be kept in check by the drastic law. Thus, if one of them injured another, the first was to pay his wages to the other during the whole time that the sick man was out of employment recovering. Conversely the captain was prevented from maltreating his men, and had to look after them. For instance, if the ship’s long boat with some of the crew in it should break adrift from the ship, the captain had to pay the lost men’s representatives their wages for a whole year, in those cases where the men were in receipt of wages instead of a share of the profits.

There were plenty of opportunities for disgruntled mariners to forsake the ship at the ports of call. In order to check this, the man who deserted his ship was liable to forfeit double his wages received or due. The usual custom was to engage the hands from the 1st of March to the last day of November, and they received their pay on the 1st of March, the 1st of June and the 1st of September. This did not mean that the vessel necessarily put to sea at the beginning of March, but in order to be sure of his men the _naukleros_ hired them before they were actually required. Having once been engaged, the mariners were forbidden by statute to leave the city, but at Pisa, when the ship was about to sail, a crier was sent round collecting the men.

It was not part of their duty to load or unload the cargo: that was done by the stevedores, but it did fall to them to ballast the ship. Each mariner, on being engaged, took an oath that he would carry out his duties, and he had to obey the master. The only occasions on which he could justifiably quit his ship were if he were made captain of another ship, or if he had made a vow to go on a pilgrimage to St. James or the Holy Sepulchre or Rome. On the other hand, he could be dismissed for theft, quarrelling, repeated disobedience, blasphemy or debauchery. At Pisa, if a mariner made a disturbance on board, the captain and other officials could put him into irons, and if he resisted they could strike him even to the drawing of blood.

No merchant of the twentieth century sending his goods across the seas would have need to inquire into the inventory or seaworthiness of the ship. Such things are taken for granted; but even in the carefully regulated conditions of these old Mediterranean ships, it was customary for merchants before putting their goods aboard to see that the vessel was well furnished with sails, yards, anchors and arms, for she should carry spare yards and sails of canvas (doubtless for hard weather), as well as other gear. The merchants were also to ascertain that the ship was water-tight, and the skipper was to fill up the seams with tow. The Venetian statutes prescribed that a ship should have so many anchors and ropes of a certain length and thickness. And thus, at last, with anything from sixteen to forty mariners—according to her size—with her merchants, their servants, men-at-arms and pilgrims and cooks, the trading vessel was allowed to go forth.

Such, then, were the conditions under which the Mercantile Marine was emerging during these interesting years. Like other nations, Venice began to lose her commercial supremacy soon after the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered in 1486. The future of the overseas trading was to be in the hands of Portugal and Spain, then to pass into the control of the Dutch, the French, and subsequently into British hands, as some day it may fall under the direction of the United States. But the important fact to remember all the while is that Venice, Genoa and Pisa did demonstrate to the world that civilisation, progress, literature, art, riches, exploration all depended on the merchant ship. Having once proved the truth of this idea, they have left behind for us in their contemporary buildings the most striking expressions of the wealth that is obtained only by means of the sea.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See _The Rhodian Sea-Law_, edited from MSS. by Walter Ashburner. Oxford 1909. A scholarly and interesting volume.