Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/555



Every merchant ship, by the laws in force among the Italian republics, was subject to prescribed rules to prevent them from being overladen. When launched, two experienced inspectors measured the ship's capacity, and, in conformity, marked upon her sides a line which it was forbidden to submerge. At Venice this mark consisted of a cross painted or carved, or formed with two plates of iron. The ships of Genoa had a triple mark of three small plates of iron fastened upon a particular line on each side of the hull, indicating a limit in depth which was not to be exceeded; while, in Sardinia, the centre of a painted ring marked the extent of the immersion allowed by law. The laws, also, prescribed many other details in the loading of the ship and in the stowage of her cargo, which, during the whole period of the middle ages, were enforced with the utmost rigour.