The laws in effect, and that concern you personally, depend on where you are. On land, at least. Mostly. When you step on a boat, though, especially if you go any distance, things get a bit more complicated. There’s a body of law called maritime or Admiralty law that governs nautical issues. But this doesn’t necessarily bear on the version of you that’s enjoying an ocean voyage — plenty of nations have their own laws that they claim apply to what happens on and under the water. There’s also the law of the sea, which is international law covering things like navigation, undersea mineral rights, and just whose national laws do or don’t apply on the ocean. This one has its own court, in Hamburg, Germany, and was formalized by the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, which began in 1973.
Why, you ask, am I prattling on about which laws apply to ships? Simple; the guy who started it all was Petrus Peckius the Elder, and he was born on July 16, 1529 in Zierikzee, Netherlands. He was born Pieter Peck, but after he received his doctorate in 1553 he Latinized his name because that’s just the way it was done in 1500s European academia.
Peckius was a prominent scholar of law in his time, and was Professor of Canon Law at the University of Leuven. He was also the equivalent of a Supreme Court justice in an institution called the Great Council. As an academician he wrote scholarly papers and articles, and as far as anybody knows he was the first to write about modern maritime law, in his monograph Ad Rem Nauticam Pertinentes, in 1556. You can still see an original copy in a museum in Milan, Italy.
There were some European laws applying to shipping and maritime trade as far back as (probably) something called Rhodian Law back in the sixth century. It’s only probable because there are surviving documents that refer to Rhodian Law, but nothing that was really part of it has ever been found. There were also rules adopted by trading organizations like the Hanseatic League. But the first glimmering of laws that were supposed to apply throughout the seas was penned by Peckius.
It’s not that simple, of course. Before anybody can claim that you broke one of these laws, there’s another set of laws to go through simply to decide which maritime laws applied to you at the time. That set of laws is known as Conflict of Laws or private international law. At some points in history, it’s even been up to you to decide what body of law you choose to apply — in Norman England (about 150 years starting in 1066), and possibly even before, if you were brought into court you could include in your plea that either common law or what passed as maritime law (in England) should be used in your case. Since England is an island nation, and so many people live near the water, this may have been more common in coastal towns.
Anyway, it’s not the fault of Petrus Peckius, but the whole thing is ridiculously complicated. My advice is that if you find yourself at sea, maybe even treading water, watch your step.
