TRACING THE PATH PODCAST

This episode traces the historical evolution of maritime law from its origins in ancient Rhodes, highlighting how these foundational rules governing the seas expanded to encompass air and even outer space.

It emphasizes how the need to tame the dangers of exploration led to the creation of these laws, which have been adapted over centuries to address new technologies and challenges, from the “cannon shot rule” defining territorial waters to modern agreements on space exploration.

The story illustrates the enduring relevance and adaptability of these principles by connecting them to diverse historical events like the Titanic disaster, the American Stamp Act, and even a modern-day NASA fuel tank rescue, demonstrating how they continue to shape international relations and inspire acts of heroism through concepts like the Law of Salvage.

The Maritime Laws

What of the outcome of the Titanic, the International Space Station, and the Chinese spy balloon were all dictated by laws that were made by the Romans? And would you believe that same set of laws will dictate what happens with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key, Collapsed Bridge?

Since the beginning of time, the human race has felt the need to explore, whether by land, water, air or space, the need to reach further is ingrained in our DNA. But exploration can be scary, so in an attempt to tame all the dangers exploration has, we have looked to create rules and laws that help everyone.

The first exploration laws came to be on the island of Rhodes in 400 BC. Rhodes happened to be perfectly located on the shipping route connecting Greek cities with Sicily, Cyprus, and Phoenicia. Those municipalities came together and made a set of laws of the sea to solve the issues and efficiencies of ships going from port to port.

They were called Maritime Laws, from the Latin meritimists, meaning of the sea.

There was no super territorial authority, so these maritime laws had to be agreed on by everyone. They were in addition to each government’s independent local and regional laws. Once each agreed to the General Maritime Laws, they used them to then create their own local port laws.

 Maritime law covers everything that occurs on the water, like defining ownership of ships, responsibilities of ship owners and captains, duties of sailors, payments of freightage, shipwreck protocol, reimbursement of damages, securement of cargo, who gets port access, and even sea rescues.

In 1200 AD, these laws became the basis for Roman Law, and then Spain adopted them in the middle ages, and in the Hanseatic League of Central and Northern Europe adopted them in 1597. The idea of territorial waters came out at the beginning of the 17th century. Hugo Grotius, lawyer for the Hague and for Holland, postulated the idea. 

He had ample opportunity to argue in court, sea bearing cases. His arguments for the seizement of ships and against responsibility in shipwrecks led him to write and propose that most of the waters of the ocean were international waters, not owned by any country.

In contrast, he also created the notion of territorial waters, suggesting that each country take possession of those waters which it can actually defend from land. He suggested that territorial waters be the distance that could actually be defended with a cannon. A cannon could reach about three miles and was known as a league. Thus the distance of territorial waters became the cannon shot rule, one league or three miles. 

During that same 17th century, England adopted maritime rules as well, as the base its foreign laws, and referred to them as the Admiralty. At first their Admiralty law was used to regulate the wine industry across Brittany, Normandy, Scotland and Flanders.

Maritime Laws Create America

But as great Britain expanded its territories, Admiralty law was used to regulate those new locations, including the colonies in America. Territories like the New World, settled by the colonists, were potential revenue generating states.

As part of the Admiralty Law, English Parliament passed the Sugar Act, which imposed a tax on the shipping of wine, coffee, and indigo into the colonies. It became part of their maritime law because it required adding custom depots wherever ships would need to register their cargo and destination.

The British Navy also began patrolling the American coast for smugglers, who have caught would be tried in a special maritime court without a jury.

When it got expensive to keep troops in America, the British parliament passed the Stamp Act. It would be a tax on newspapers, playing cards, diplomas, legal documents, and anything else printed on paper. Violators of the Stamp Act would also be tried in Admiralty Courts.

Reaction to the Stamp Act was swift. The people rioted. There were boycotts of British goods and merchandise was stopped from being unloaded. John Adams said, “The Stamp Act did more to unify the colonists than anything else. In every colony from Georgia to New Hampshire inclusively, the Stamp Distributors and Inspectors were expelled by the unconquerable rage of the people. The people, even to the lowest ranks, became attentive to their liberties, more inquisitive about them, and more determined to defend them than they were ever before they even understood them.

In October of 1765, delegates from the nine colonies met forming the Stamp Act Congress, which wrote a letter acknowledging that Parliament had right to enact maritime laws to regulate trade, but not tax the colonists. It was the first time taxation without representation was born.

These laws that were first written on the island of Rhodes passed the Romans to the English, and contributed to the formation of the United States. They’re the same laws that will one day be entangled in the Chinese spy balloon story, the Titanic, and even our plans to inhabit Mars.

Maritime Antarctica

The 20th century would expand maritime law like it never had before, largely because of HG Wells and the Wright Brothers. Flight Just like our international waters, no one had yet contemplated who owned the air above the land.

World War I would make it very clear that there needed to be a set of laws to govern the air. There was no better way than expanding the existing maritime laws, vertically.

The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 was convened to settle the end of World War I. There France brought up implementing new air regulations. Everyone was in agreement with the first discussion point that each country should maintain absolute sovereignty over the airspace above it, its territories and waters. But that creates the conundrum maritime law has always struggled with.

How do we create laws that offer safety and sovereignty while also promoting exploration and peaceful free passage? It would be virtually impossible to fly without entering someone’s territorial airspace. Beyond the 43 articles detailing the post-war plans, the Paris Peace Conference also laid out the new maritime air regulations.

They were published in English, French, and Italian. But not everyone could read or speak one of those three languages. So Vladimir Mandel, a Czechoslovakia and lawyer who focused on transportation, took it upon himself to author works on the 1919 conference in the Czech language for his people. But Mandel had another fascination, H.G. Wells.

He had read Wells’ science fiction books on outer space life, and though he was way ahead of his time, in 1932 he published a work on the problem of interstellar transport, referencing the thoughts of Robert Goddard for one.

And then he published a fifty-page book on space law, to which he postulated that no country should have ownership of space, it should be considered international waters, as maritime law stated. Each country’s sovereignty should end at the point where space begins and earth ends.

 Reminder, this was 1932.

His writings didn’t get much traction at the time, since space travel still seemed an impossibility to many. The real topics being discussed weren’t the far of reaches of space, but the yet unexplored spaces on Earth. 

For instance, in 1927, the National Academy of Sciences in the US decided it was time to explore the oceans more. So we created the first permanent research laboratory on the East Coast, called The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Using a $2.5M grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, they constructed a laboratory building and commenced the first ever dedicated research vessel specifically for ocean research.

It was designed as a 460-ton sailboat fetch they named Atlantis. This peaceful scientific endeavor led to discussions about the use of Antarctica as well.

And in 1959, the US and 12 scientific nations signed an Antarctic Treaty, which stated that the Antarctic continent should be used for peaceful purposes, with scientific freedom and cooperation made permanent.

Well, Antarctica remained peaceful in both World War I and World War II.

The United States learned in World War II that the three-mile cannon shot rule needed to be changed. When that was written, the Roman didn’t have to worry about enemy submarines they couldn’t see getting close to the shore.

During World War II, German submarines sinking US ships in the Gulf of Mexico forced the US to move their oil pipelines. It also made the US re-look at the definition of territorial waters.

In 1958, the nations of the world met after years of discussion and decided that each country should have sovereignty over the first 12 miles or 22 kilometers of water from the shore. The three-mile cannon shot rule didn’t meet the needs of the modern world.

Sputnik Changed Maritime Law

With every corner of the earth, thou regulated by some form of maritime law, Russia’s launch of Sputnik would forever refocus the eyes of the world away from the seas back to outer space.

Sputnik officially launched the space race and got President JFK to promise to the world that the United States would land on the moon within the decade. Making outer space, the newest unregulated area to be discussed.

Without our space being similar to Antarctica, namely each being in remote, extreme environments with potentially valuable resources, the countries were eager to apply the rules already agreed upon in the Antarctic Treaty to create the first ever 1967 Outer Space Agreement.

Maritime law now covered the seas, Antarctica, earth’s navigable airspace and outer space.

But would any of these laws ever matter?

As you’re about to hear next, they regularly matter, very close to home. All you have to do is look at instances like the Titanic disaster in 1912.

Titanic was a wake-up call for maritime law. Prior to the Titanic disaster, much of maritime law hadn’t really been updated since 1894, when the largest ships were 13 tons. The rules for how many lifeboats a 13-ton ship must have weren’t adequate for the 46-ton Titanic, for example.

Not only that, but ships weren’t even mandated to have 24-hour radio communications with power back up. There was a section of maritime law written in 1851 that the Titanic would come to rely on.

This liability rule was written to both encourage exploration and hold people accountable for accidents.

Life on the seas is dangerous. Unlike on land, it often can’t be avoided. So the 1851 law limited the liability of a ship owner in an accident to the value of the ship and its cargo. For the Titanic which set sail before an ice patrol or radar, the accident could have resulted in millions and millions of lawsuits.

But as long as there was no ill intent, the limited liability clause of 1851 could be used, and Titanic’s liability was capped.

Another maritime law recently exercised occurred off the coast of Florida in 1994, which brings us to the first true hero of this episode.

NASA and the Law of Salvage

On November 13, 1994, Captain Skip Strong had loaded up his oil tanker with 9 million gallons of fuel. The crew of 24 was bringing the fuel from the refinery in New Orleans to their customer in Jacksonville, Florida.

His ship was called Cherry Valley and was 686 feet long weighing 44,000 tons. At the same time in Michould, Louisiana, the tugboat J.A. Orgren was getting hooked up to its cargo. It was also making the 900-mile trip around Florida to their client in the Orlando area.

There was a small storm brewing in Central America, but nothing that would interfere with their trip, so they both launched as usual. Shortly after leaving New Orleans, however, Orgeron’s jockey arm connecting its two rudders broke, resulting in the complete disability of its starboard rudder for the duration of the voyage. Rather than stop and get it fixed, the captain of the tug thought the port rudder would the duration of the voyage.

 However, three days into the trip, rounding the southernmost tip of Florida, the weather began to change. As Captain Skip Strong had said in interviews many times since. . . “it was a dark and stormy night.”

When the weather got worse, the captain of the tugboat radioed his boss asking for permission to seek refuge by the shore, but it was denied. At 2am on November 15, the tugboat lost both engines, resting between 10 and 18 miles from shore. And because the barge it was towing was so large, they were immediately being pushed toward the shore by the wind.

That’s when the captain of the tugboat radio’d MayDay to the Coast Guard. Because of the storm, however, the Coast Guard couldn’t help. That little dustup of weather in Nicaragua had become a tropical storm in Jamaica, and now had turned into Hurricane Gordon.

The captain of the tug thought their only chance for survival was to release the barge to its own fate. But as preparations were being made, Captain Strong, of the oil tanker, radioed in to hear more details. He determined he was an over an hour away, but he probably could help.

Skip Strong just didn’t know if he could navigate a 686 foot tanker to find a tugboat in time. Also, as the tugboat was being blown closer and closer to shore, the real tanker knew that if they got too close, the water would be too shallow.

Around 4am, he saw the two dim lights of the tugboat through the rain and fog. On their first attempt to shoot a line to the tug, the line fell short. A second try would be a 45 minute loop out and back, and thus drifting closer and closer to shallow seas. On the second try the rope made it to the tug was tied off but then it snapped free.

Captain Strong thought he had time to make one more attempt, another 45 minute loop, and this time he got so close to the tugboat to crew handed the line to the crew of the tug. Once tied down, the power of the engine set out for deeper water and waited out the storm.

It wasn’t until 5 o’clock PM that day, Captain Strong was finally able to see what J.A. Orgeron was towing. It was the largest barge Captain Strong had ever seen behind a tugboat. He could see now how its height was acting as a sail, pulling them into shore.

That’s when he asked the tugboat captain what they were towing.

And the Captain replied, “It was a load for NASA. They were headed to Cape Canaveral to deliver the massive orange fuel tank that gets strapped to the bottom of the space shuttle.”

Skip Strong had just saved a NASA mission.

This is where maritime law comes into play, It is one of the laws designed to encourage exploration and is called the Law of Salvage.

Exploration is scary. One big storm in your ship may not make it out alive. So to encourage others to risk their lives to help you, the Law of Salvage is a hero’s reward. If you choose to put your life in danger in order to save someone, you should be rewarded heavily.

The Law and Salvage says saving someone, should be profitable.

It’s not designed for the Coast Guard or for anyone whose job is to save people and cargo.

When Skip’s company heard that he had saved a $50 million fuel tank, they knew the Law of Salvage would mean they might be eligible to get a $25 million reward based on the value of what was saved in the conditions.

NASA, who was ecstatic that they saved the fuel tank, immediately offered a $5 million reward to the tanker company, and they were eager to take it.

But courts got involved, and they eventually got $4.5 million, a much deserved reward.

There’s no other law in the world that rewards heroes for doing heroic things.

Keep in mind that Captain Skip Strong didn’t know they were rescuing a NASA fuel tank. He got a MayDat alert from a tugboat that might have been towing sewage refuse. The reward didn’t make him a hero. Their actions did.

But if that’s not enough, the fuel tank he saved had no damage. NASA tests proved it weathered the storm. And because of that, it was used on NASA’s 100th manned spaceflight, on space shuttle Atlantis. It was used to take two cosmonauts to the Mir Space Station and bring two cosmonauts and an astronaut home.

It would be the first crew change on the space station, a structure that was built with the collaboration laws of the Space Law Treaty of 1967.

Sadly for space exploration, the Law of Salvage was not made part. Instead of rewarding heroes in space, the law mandates that a person in need is required to help. No reward.

One thing still being figured out in space is where Earth stops and space begins. That distance or line is still undeclared. China recently used this grey area when it flew a spy balloon over the US, citing that it was above the 12-mile limit in low Earth orbit and that would be considered international waters.

But it was clearly lower than that when a US military plane shot it down over South Carolina. With more and more private companies like SpaceX launching their own satellites, the debate on what is low earth orbit and what is territorial airspace, rages on.

Surely the Romans weren’t thinking about that when writing maritime law.