I recently found out that some of my ship captain ancestors were shipwrecked in the South Pacific (and yes, there was a weird meta-Robinson Crusoe moment where one of my many greats uncle wrote in his diary about being like Robinson Crusoe… while stranded on an island… like Robinson Crusoe).
Anyways, that raised a ton of questions for me about how the whole shipping thing worked during the 1800s. It appears that the route these guys like to take was from Cape Cod (home) to San Francisco to Liverpool, then back home.
So my question is, how did this work- both generally and specifically related to shipwrecks? When they were carrying cargo worth a quarter of a million dollars, were they liable for it? What if you shipwrecked- was the cargo insured? Any idea what the cargo would have been on the route I described? Was one’s ship insured? If you were a captain, what did you have to do to get your men out back home? And if you were a captain, did you own your boat?
As to the cargo, back then some ships traded “on their own account” ie the owner bought cargo, carried it somewhere, then sold it. However it is far more likely that the cargo would have been owned by a third party or third parties. Cargo owners may have chartered the entire ship to carry, say, wheat. Alternatively, the ship might be what was known as a “general” ship: one that carried items of cargo for all-comers, under bills of lading.
Usually both the ship and the cargo would be (seperately) insured. The history of insurance is pretty much the history of marine insurance, since marine insurance is how insurance started out. It’s old. The market in marine insurance that started in Lloyd’s Coffee House commenced in the late 1600’s.
The master may have owned his own ship or it may have been owned by others but the latter would be far more common.
As to getting the seamen back home I don’t know about US law. Under UK law it was an offence to leave seamen behind and not bring them back to their home port if possible, and other UK ships had by law a duty to bring distressed seafarers home. They were paid by the Board of Trade for doing so.
As to whether the ship’s owner would be liable if the cargo was lost: it depends. The very broad principles (then and today) are that the owner has an obligation to start with a seaworthy ship, and to do their best to look after the cargo during the voyage, but they are by no means absolutely liabile for the safety of the cargo.
As my copy of Abbott’s Law of Merchant Ships and Seamen, 1901, puts it, if the master allows a cargo of grain to be eaten by mice he may be liable. If he has cats on board, he won’t be liable since he’s done the best he could.
Shipwrecks were most probably the result of bad weather and/or bad navigation. Certainly the first and probably the second would excuse the owners of the ship from liability. Back then it was accepted that navigation was a “black art” and very difficult and contracts of carriage would usually exclude liability in such circumstances (an exclusion that largely persists to this day).
Somewhat related and probably doesn’t merit it’s own thread - what is the name of the crime where a captain deliberately sinks his ship in order to claim the insurance money please?
I’ve never heard a specific term. Scuttling is sinking your own ship deliberately, but that term covers any motivation for doing so, not just insurance fraud.
some times the Captian owned a part of the ship, sometimes the Captian owned the ship it all depended on the shipping company.
The cargo and ship were insured most of the time.
The crew signed “Articles” naming a port that tey agreed to stay with the ship until, and I believe it would be the ship company’s responcibility to get them there or some where that they were willing to sign off at.
Managed to google it eventually. I was thinking of Barratry, which has a slightly different definition to what I thought it was. Captains who deliberately sank their ships in order to make insurance claims were convicted of it, but it has a much wider definition.
From the east coast to the west coast then all the way to an island to the east and then back again to the east coast? That seems like a huge waste of time.
At that time, because of the lack of Panama Canal, my understanding is that if you were taking a non-polar route, you had to go with the tradewinds (through the Pacific).
If you’re interested in the topic, I heartily suggest Two Years Before the Mast, which was written by a young Harvard man who in the 1830’s decided to up and become a seaman to save his eyesight. He wrote it partly to expose the horrible working conditions aboard a merchanter, but accidentally inspired a bunch of young men to do the same thing. It’s quite well written and very interesting.
ETA - by the way, Dana’s ship goes to San Francisco (in the 1830’s not a very happening place) to buy hides.