commissioner may act as arbitrator by written consent of the parties. Seaworthiness is an implied condition of the hiring. There may be an examination of the ship on the complaint of the mate and a majority of the crew. The expenses of an unnecessary investigation are a charge upon the wages of those who complain. A seaman may not leave his ship without the consent of the master. For foreign-bound voyages a medicine-chest and antiscorbutics must be carried, also 60 gallons of water, 100 ℔ of salted meat, and 100 ℔ of wholesome bread for every person on board, and for every seaman at least one suit of woollen clothing, and fuel for the fire of the seaman’s room. An assessment of forty cents per month per seaman is levied on every vessel arriving from a foreign port and on every registered coasting vessel in aid of the fund for the relief of sick, and disabled seamen. In the navy a deduction of twenty cents per month from each man’s pay is made for the same purpose. The offences and punishments are similar to those in the United Kingdom. There is also the additional offence of wearing a sheath knife on shipboard. As in England, consuls are required to provide for the passage home of destitute seamen (see Revised Statutes, §§ 4554–4591). A seamen’s fund was constituted by the act of the 16th of July 1798, amended by subsequent legislation.
Continental European Countries.—The commercial codes contain revisions of a more or less detailed character. For France see §§ 250-272; Italy. §§ 343-380; Netherlands. §§ 394-452; Germany. Wendt, Maritime Legislation (1888). These enactments are in general accordance with British legislation. In Germany the law goes a little further than in the United Kingdom in enacting that copies of the part of the law affecting him must be handed to each seaman on his engagement at a seamen’s office.
Authorities.—The works on merchant shippings, such as those of Abbott, Boyd, Kay, Maclachlan, Maude and Pollock, Temperley, and on admiralty law and practice, such as those of Roscoe and Williams and Bruce. Also E. S. Roscoe Modern Legislation for Seamen and for Safety at Sea (1885). (J. W.)
SEA-POWER. This term is used to indicate two distinct,
though cognate, things. The affinity of these two and the
indiscriminate manner in which the term has been
applied to each have tended to obscure its real significance.
The obscurity has been deepened by the
frequency with which the term has been confounded
History of the term.
with the old phrase, “Sovereignty of the sea,” and the still
current expression, “Command of the sea” (vide Sea, Command of).
A discussion—etymological, or even archaeological in
character—of the term must be undertaken as an introduction
to the explanation of its now generally accepted meaning.
It is one of those compound words in which a Teutonic and a
Latin (or Romance) element are combined, and which are easily
formed and become widely current when the sea is concerned.
Of such are “sea-coast,” “sea-forces” (the “land- and sea forces”
used to be a common designation of what we now call
the “Army and Navy”); “sea-service,” “sea-serpent” and
“sea-officer” (now superseded by “naval officer”). The term
in one form is as old as the 15th century. Edward III., in commemoration
of the naval victory of Sluys, coined gold “ nobles ”
which bore on one side his efligy “ crowned, standing in a large
ship, holding in one hand a sword and in the other a shield.”
An anonymous poet, who wrote in the reign of Henry VI.,
says of this coin:—
| “For four things our noble showeth to me, |
| King, ship and sword, and power of the sea.” |
Even in its present form the term is not of very recent date. Grote (Hist. of Greece, v. 67, published in 1849, but with preface dated 1848) speaks of “the conversion of Athens from a land-power into a sea-power.” In a lecture published in 1883, but probably delivered earlier, the late Sir J. R. Seeley says that “commerce was swept out of the Mediterranean by the besom of the Turkish sea-power” (Expansion of England, p. 89). The term also occurred in the 9th edition of this Encyclopaedia, vol. xviii. p. 574, in the article “Persia,” where we are told that Themistocles was “the founder of the Attic sea-power.” The sense in which the term is used differs in these extracts. In the first it means what we generally call a “naval power”—that is to say, a state having a considerable navy in contradistinction to a “military power,” a state with a considerable army but only a relatively small navy. In this sense there are many old uses of the phrase. In the last two extracts it means all the elements of the naval strength of the state referred to; and this is the meaning that is now generally, and is likely to be exclusively, attached to the term owing to the brilliant way in which it has been elucidated by Captain A. T. Mahan of the United States Navy.
The double use of the term is common in German, though in that language both parts of the compound now in use are Teutonic. One instance out of many may be cited from the historian Adolf Holm (Griechische Geschichte, Berlin, 1889). He says (ii. p. 37) that Athens, being in possession of a good naval port, could become “eine bedeutende Seemacht,” i.e. an important naval power. He also says (ii. p. 91) that Gelon of Syracuse, besides a large army (Heer), had “eine bedeutende Seernacht,” meaning a considerable navy. The term, in the first of the two senses, is old in German, as appears from the following, extracted from Zedler’s Grosses Universal Lexicon, vol. xxxvi. (Leipzig and Halle, 1743); “Seemachten, Seepotenzen; Latin, summae potestates mari potentes.” “Seepotenzen” is probably quite obsolete now. It is interesting as showing that German no more abhors Teuto-Latin or Teuto-Romance compounds than English. We may note, as a proof of the indeterminate meaning of the expression until his own epoch-marking works had appeared, that Mahan himself in his earliest book, Influence of Sea-power on History (1890), used it in both senses. He says (p. 35), “The Spanish Netherlands ceased to be a sea-power.” He alludes (p. 42) to the development of a nation as a “sea-power,” and (p. 43) to the inferiority of the Confederate States “as a sea-power.” Also (p. 225) he remarks of the war of the Spanish Succession that “before it England was one of the sea-powers, after it she was the sea-power without any second.”, In all these passages, as appears from the use of the indefinite article, what is meant is a “naval power, or a state in possession of a strong navy. The other meaning of the term forms the general subject of Mahan's' writings. In his earlier works Mahan, writes “sea power” as two words; but in a published letter of the 19th February 1897 he joins them with a hyphen, and defends this formation of the term and the sense in which he uses it. We may regard him as the virtual inventor of the term in its more diffused meaning, for—even if it had been employed by earlier writers in that sense—it is he beyond all question who has given it general currency. He has made it impossible for any one to treat of sea-power without frequent reference to his writings and conclusions.
There is something more than mere literary, interest in the fact that the term in another language was used more than two thousand years ago. Before Mahan no historian—not even one of those who specially devoted themselves to the narration of naval occurrences—had evinced a ore correct appreciation of the general principles of Appreciation of sea-power by the ancients. naval warfare than Thucydides. He alludes several times to the importance of getting command of the sea. Great Britain would have been saved some disasters and been less often in peril had British writers-taken as guides by the public possessed the same grasp of the true principles of defence as Thucydides exhibited. One passage in his history is worth quoting. Brief as it is, it shows that on the subject of sea-power he was a predecessor of Mahan. In a speech in favour of prosecuting the war, which he puts in the mouth of Pericles, these words occur: οἱ μὲν γὰρ οὐχ ἕξουσιν ἀλλην . . ., . . . . . τῆς θαλάσσης κράτοςς. The last part of this extract, though often translated “command of the sea,” or “dominion of the sea,” really has the wider meaning of sea-power, the “power of the sea” of the old English poet above quoted. This wider meaning should be attached to certain passages in Herodotus (iii. 122 in two places; v. 83), which have been generally interpreted “commanding the sea,” or by the mere titular and honorific “having the dominion of the sea.” One editor of Herodotus, Ch. F. Baehr, did, however, see exactly what was meant, for, with reference to the allusion to Polycrates, he says, classe maximum valuit. This is perhaps as exact a definition of sea-power as could be given in a sentence.
It is, however, impossible to give a definition which would be at the same time succinct and satisfactory. To say that “sea-power” means the sum total of the various elements that go to make up the naval strength of a state would be in reality to beg the question. Mahan lays down “principal conditions affecting the sea-power of nations,” but he does not attempt to give a concise definition of it. Yet no one who has studied his works will find it difficult to understand what it indicates. Our present task is, within the necessarily restricted limits of an article in an encyclopedia, to put readers in possession of the means of doing this. The
