Maritime Safety: From Shipwrecks to International Regulations

Sea travel brings with it a great deal of dangers. Over millennia, crew members feared falling overboard or becoming castaways following a wrecking of their vessel. The estimated three million wrecks that litter the bottom of the ocean only superficially tell the individual human tales that accompanied the ships to the deep. Nevertheless, for centuries, individuals have taken precautions to ensure, despite disaster, survival at sea. Maritime security was not just about the hazards of sea travel but also about piracy and naval warfare. The European maritime expansion in the fifteenth century thus saw an expansion in thinking about security and safety in the world’s oceans.

Humans are not meant to survive in the ocean for long, and immersion in the water can significantly stress the body. Initially, it was thought that ocean temperature plays a significant role in survival, with water temperatures below 5 degrees Celsius quickly inducing hypothermia. More recent studies have revealed other factors, such as cold shock, can result in cardiac arrest and loss of muscular agility, which result in drowning before hypothermia can set in. Gradually adjusting to immersion and keeping a significant percentage of the body above water through flotation devices or, even better, life rafts can significantly prolong survival rates. Yet even life rafts do not ensure life indefinitely, as dehydration and exposure to the elements will take a toll on the human body.

It is estimated that 4-5 percent of all voyages ended in disaster during the Age of Sail. Mariners frequently swapped real or imagined shipwreck stories in gatherings to entertain crowds. As printing became more commonplace, short stories about maritime disasters circulated widely with widespread appeal and took many forms. Single-leaf broadsides, larger chapbooks, or, especially in the Hispanic world, string literature—small pamphlets suspended from a cord in front of bookshops—narrated such tragic events. By the eighteenth century, such individual accounts were combined into books, such as Bernardo Gomes de Brito’s Tragic History of the Sea. Initially, such stories suggested little about prolonging survival at sea, adopting an almost fatalistic tone that suggested little could be done to improve safety conditions. Tales of shipwrecks thus became metaphors for endurance, testing, and warning. For instance, in the Portuguese and Spanish context, such stories of doom stood as a check for advocating unbridled maritime expansion. In Englishspeaking literature, on the other hand, disasters were often conceived as an Act of God to test the resolve and character of those involved. Surviving at sea became tantamount to redemption. The eighteenth century and its enlightened thought raised empathy and sympathy for those lost at sea. Larger exploratory vessels thus carried a contingent of skiffs to row to and from the shore and provide shelter for those affected by a sinking ship.

Another example derived from Benjamin Franklin, who suggested augmenting the number of lighthouses along the shores following a narrow escape from a ship disaster.

Between 1780 and 1820, a noticeable shift in attitude occurred. The earlier fatalism gave way to greater confidence in the human ability to master the seas. Thus, this period witnessed a significant improvement in shipbuilding—copper sheathing—and navigational technology—chronometers—partially in response to increasing insurance rates. Such upgrades almost halved tragic occurrences on the open ocean. Individual countries took safety concerns a step further. In Britain, a more scientific approach to shipwreck narratives emerged that filtered out the earlier emphasis on human tragedy and sought to isolate the root causes behind the disaster: construction, human error, or cargo overload. Starting in the 1830s, legislation in this country first concerned itself with cargo (especially the improper transport of timber). Later, such embryonic laws embraced the more comprehensive testing of naval officers. Around the same time, the Steamboat Act introduced regular testing of vessels operating on lakes and rivers in the United States. Other countries quickly adopted similar legislation, and in 1889, the United States hosted the First International Maritime Conference. The delegates suggested establishing a transnational organization overseeing maritime safety.

Such an international organization slowly emerged and became connected with developments in the second half of the nineteenth century. The advent of fossil fuel-powered engines made shipping schedules more reliable and increased security. Yet, simultaneously, the volume of goods and people shuttled between continents significantly increased. Thus, while shipwrecks were rarer than earlier, the number of casualties associated with such tragedies significantly increased. If casualties related to a ship numbered in the dozens during the Age of Sail, in the fossil-fueled age, such numbers would skyrocket into the hundreds. Similarly, new technologies also brought about a sense of hubris. When the Titanic launched in the early twentieth century, many individuals considered the vessel unsinkable. An encounter with an iceberg off the coast of North America brought tragedy, which was compounded by the fact that an inadequate number of lifeboats led to the death of 1,500 out of 2,200 people aboard.

The Titanic disaster brought nations together, and in 1914, the Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) was enacted. The outbreak of the First World War affected its immediate implementation, and SOLAS saw amendments several times over the years to accommodate propulsion, cargo, and shipbuilding changes. Such concerns would ultimately lead to the creation of the international body concerned with safety, which emerged from the United Nations in 1948. By 1982, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) had appeared in London. While the IMO is primarily concerned with the safety and security of shipping, this organization has recently been charged with preventing maritime pollution. The extension of naval safety to oceanic contamination illustrates that, since the twenty- first century, interest in life and cargo has given way to a concern about the survival of the oceans.

FURTHER READING: Boxer, C. R., Bernado Gomes de Brito, and Josiah Blackmore. 2002. The Tragic History of the Sea. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kelly, Morgan, Cormac О Grade, and Peter Soler. 2021. “Safety at Sea during the Industrial Revolution.” The Journal of Economic History 81 (1): 239-75.

Mitchell-Cook. 2013. A Sea of Misadventures: Shipwrecks and Survival in Early America. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Palmer, Sarah. 2005. “Leaders and Followers: The Development of International Maritime Policy in the Nineteenth Century.” International Journal of Maritime History 17 (2): 299-309. Piantadosi, Claude A. 2003. The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments. Oxford: Oxford University Press.