Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/595

 *ing sailors during the night by opening their knives, tangling their hair, tearing their bedding, and which, in some of its freaks, would be bold enough to attack the ship herself, tying the ropes into knots so that they would not run through the blocks, carrying away the anchors in a calm, and tearing holes in the sails when they were closely reefed.

The laws regulating the manners and morals of seamen were frequently very severe. Moncenigo, in 1420, punished with flogging every man guilty of blasphemy, or even of swearing, and inflicted a penalty of one hundred sous on any sailor of the poop, any steersman, officer, or gentleman, who was guilty of the like offence. The Norman code ordered the sailor guilty of robbery to have his head shaved, and then to be tarred and feathered. In this state he was made to pass through the crew ranged in two files, and each man struck him a blow with a stick or a stone, after which he was dismissed the ship.

In conformity with the earlier laws, Peter III., of Aragon, passed in 1354 an ordinance condemning every man to run the gauntlet who gambled with his effects. In certain cases the admiral of a fleet could cut the delinquent's ears off for a similar offence; and he had even the power also to cut out his tongue, if, for example, any unhappy culprit should insult or menace the master or captain. In the commencement of the fourteenth century, the Catalonian law inflicted the punishment of chopping off the hand of any man who cut the cable of the ship malignantly. In 1397, at Ancona, any sailor who abandoned a ship