I wasn’t implying you were sarcastic - I agree it must be an old custom if that’s the original reason (as I think it is).
This would only be true if humans were, similarly, completely even-handed. But we’re not, and our bias to right-handedness means that complete chance is not at work here.
Having said that, I agree the passing swordsman explanation sounds folky, especially since a lot of the times you have a sword in your hand, you also have a shield in the other, and *that’s *the side you want to present to your enemy, not your swordhand. Or at least, that’s how it works in SCA single combat…
Humans are around 90% right-handed, which has led to many cultural biases against left-handers, meaning that for practical purposes… humans are assumed to be RH or choose to be seen as RH far more than any other case. So a theory based on keeping the dominant weapon hand outboard and free makes sense across the generations.
Good point. However, I think chance may still be a big factor, and could be a bigger factor than any advantage there may be to right-handers in a particular convention. That is, we could have arrived at conventions that are actually mildly suboptimal for right-handers, just by chance, if the disadvantage is so small that (a) the practice could have been accepted anyway, and (b) once adopted, there would be a cost in switching.
In a nutshell, I think the importance of handedness is overstated in these discussions. Right-handed people do not have useless left hands. Just ask a right-handed guitarist; a lot of the time, it is their left hand that is doing the difficult stuff (which is not to say that right-hand technique is less important, before any guitarists jump on me!)
This is from memory only, but I do believe that no blame was placed on the Stockholm, that blame was placed fully on the Stockholm. By maritime law this is very important.
By maritime law if both ships were held to be at fault then both companies would have to bare the expense of the loss evenly. This is different than most countries land laws.
I believe that many countries no longer accept maritime law as the final word, but in 1956 most did. And there were limits to the amount that a company could be held. The limit was either the value of the ship and cargo after the accident or I am remembering $1,000,000 (it may have been 10M).
The company of the Andre Doria was on the hook for the $1M. But the value of the Stockholm after the accident was more than $1M. So after paying off the losses to the passengers The Andre Doria’s company could have collected money from the Stockholm’s company. This question ended up in the courts for years. I think it was in the late 60’s that a final ruling came out putting final blame on the Stockholm. But that was appealed. I also heard that the Stockholm did pay out some damages to the families of her passengers that were hurt. But that was through the country’s courts of the flag she was flying.
The deck Midshipmen at the maritime academy use to joke that the advise they got from pilots was if you hit a sailing boat in the harbor who was not following the rules of the road besure and sink them to protect your company.
“Maritime Law” is not (and never was) a unitary thing in the way you imply.
A judge of my acquaintence likes to make jibes about Maritime Lawyers[sup]TM[/sup] like myself always wanting to argue that Maritime Law[sup]TM[/sup] is unique and different, for the purpose of preserving our mystique (and our bank balances). He’s joking. Mostly.
Actually maritime law is just law pertaining to matters maritime and has evolved over literally thousands of years. Some of it goes back to the Phoenicans but it has never stood still. There is no single thing that is "Maritime Law[sup]TM[/sup], and it’s not that many countries “no longer accept” Maritime Law[sup]TM[/sup]. It’s just that from a certain time most places changed their maritime laws away from earlier rigid rules about collision liability.
Can you rephrase? I find your post difficult to comprehend and I am interested to understand.
The general rule (outside Admiralty) in many common law jurisdictions was that contributory negligence was a complete defence. What this meant was that if there was an incident causing loss to A and so A sued B claiming the incident was caused by B, if B successfully proved that A’s negligence contributed to the incident, then A’s claim failed entirely. So to put that in English, you crash into me in your car. I sue you for my injuries. The court finds that the accident was 90% your fault but agrees with you that the incident was slightly my fault (10%). As a consequence, my claim against you totally fails. Harsh.
However, in Admiralty there was a different rule namely that if a collision was caused by one ship then the other ship could claim its entire loss. But if both ships were to blame then losses were divided 50/50 even if the collision was 90% one ship’s fault and only 10% the other ship’s fault. Again, somewhat harsh.
I haven’t researched the Andrea Doria collision but what Snnipe 70E is saying is that (as a consequence of the above rule) if the Stockholm could be shown to be at all at fault it would have been 50% liable.
By the way, admiralty was the first area of law to remove arbitrary rules about blame for collisions. By the early 20th century the 50/50 rule was gone from most places, and replaced with a system by which liability was proportional to blame. The general law did not catch up for many decades after, in most jurisdictions.
Along with this there was a limit on the liability. If the Stockholm had any share of the fault then her company limit would the value of the Stockholm after the collision. And the Andrea Doria’s company limit would have been $1M. The two values would have been added together and damages paid out that. Damages to the passengers first, cargo lost 2nd and shipping companies 3rd. Any remaining funds would have been divided between the two companies. But remember the Andrea Doria’s company lost a ship worth many millions.
I reread my earlier post and found an error. The final blame was put fully on the Andrea Doria not the Stockholm.
I’m curious as to your conclusion that final blame was put fully on Andrea Doria, from what I’m reading there was a settlement and no final conclusion as to blame.
As to limitation of liability, I don’t know which of the many limitation regimes would have applied in this case. Perhaps the 1924 Convention. It gets very complicated and I’m not attempting to go into it further.
While much of it could be post-facto reasoning, it is hard to argue with the papal decree around 1300. Previous to that it was a custom, and may have varied from place to place, but after that it was the standard.
A question related to the main topic: walking in crowded places. When walking the hallways of, say, my school (when I was younger), or a crowded mall, I keep right. I always have.
I think this may have been encouraged in elementary school when we walked places as a class in single file, but from 8-years old or so I imagined myself as a car, and keeping right was just natural.
In countries where they drive on the left, would they walk on the left?
To be clear, I don’t mean pedestrians on roads. You walk facing traffic. I mean pedestrians in areas where the only traffic is pedestrians, and the traffic flows both ways. Do people tend to walk on the side they drive on?
I have even noticed, in very wide malls, two distinct traffic lanes form. Like, Going from west-to-east across a north-south wing, you’d have slow southbound traffic looking in shop windows, then rapid northbound traffic, then a gap in the middle, then rapid southbound traffic, then slow northbound traffic looking in shop windows. Like two parallel roads, each with shops on only one side of it.
Yeah. Some blame goes to both for assuming they knew what the other was doing and not double checking. But the greater share of the blame goes to the one who assumed the other was not doing the standard predictable thing. And a huge portion of blame goes to the one who was doing something weird and unpredictable.
(Funny, I recently heard a podcast where the hosts were sharing advice they’d received when learning to drive, and “be predictable” was one of the best gems in there.)
I do too. I suspect it is in part the “icebreaker bow”. And partly that the casualties on her were only among her crew, not her passengers. So there is no mention of passengers on Stockholm in thumbnail accounts of the crash.
IME, yes.
The Stockholm Andrea Doria collision was the first major collision between two passenger liners. And I think still the only one,.
You can not assume they knew what the other was doing. The Andrea Doria made a turn opposite what the Stockholm was expecting. Her helmsman did not keep the course solid but drifted 5 degrees off base course and back. And the Andrea Doria did not make sure the Stockholm understood her intent.
At sea in the dark depending on radar to determine what is going on is not as easy as people think. It takes several minutes to determine the course of a dot on a screen. And if the dot changes course it does not show up right away it takes a few minutes. And by the time anyone realizes something has gone wrong and what is the best way to avoid a collision also is not done in a instant. And when you start giving rudder orders and ring up emergency astern it takes minutes for the ship to respond.
To give an example. I was on a T-2 tanker when we ran into fog. I got an emergency full astern bell just as the 2nd was heading down into the engine room to relieve me. I put the main motor if full astern. (A T-2 is turbo electric, which means the same power astern as forward.) The 2nd and I went over the status of the engine and boiler rooms. took at least 5 minutes. ?He relieved me. I walked up out of the engine room out onto the deck. From the Aft house I could not see the bridge house. As I was looking forward I heard the EOT ring. I looked over the side and could not see if we were making any way. IO assumed the bell was either a stop bell or dead slow ahead bell.
As to what the courts decided. Around 1969 or 1970 I heard a news report that an Admiralty court cleared the Stockholm of any blame. But the Andrea Doria’s company was going to continue the fight is having some blame place on the Stockholm, so it may have changed. It still may be in the courts.