SEA LAWS, a title which came into use among writers on maritime law in the i6th century, and was applied by them to certain mediaeval collections of usages of the sea recognized as having the force of customary law, either by the judgments of a maritime court or by the resolutions of a congress of merchants and shipmasters. These mediaeval codes were preceded by the Rhodian sea law, a monument of Byzantine jurisprudence. Among the mediaeval sea laws the most important are the laws of Oleron, embodying the usages of the mariners of the Atlantic and the source of much of the English Maritime law next the laws of Visby (Wisby).
The earliest collection of such usages received in England is described in the Black Book of the Admiralty as the "Laws of Oleron," whilst the earliest known text is contained in the Liber Memorandorum of the corporation of the City of London, pre served in the archives of their Guildhall. These laws are in an early handwriting of the 14th century, and the title prefixed to them is La Charte d'Oleroun des juggementz de la mier. How and in what manner these "Judgments of the Sea" came to be col lected is not altogether certain. Cleirac, a learned advocate in the parlement of Bordeaux, in the introduction to his work on Les Us et coustumes de la mer (Bordeaux, 1647), states that Eleanor of Aquitaine (q.v.), having observed during her visit to the Holy Land that the collection of customs of the sea con tained in The Book of the Consulate of the Sea (see CONSULATE OF THE SEA) was held in high repute in the Levant, directed on her return that a record should be made of the judgments of the maritime court of the island of Oleron (at that time a peculiar court of the duchy of Guienne), in order that they might serve as law amongst the mariners of . the Western sea. He states further that Richard I. of England, on his return from the Holy Land, brought back with him a roll of those judgments, which he published in England and ordained to be observed as law. Though some writers doubt the story of Richard I. having brought back La Leye Olyroun to England, the general outline of Cleirac's account accords with a memorandum on the famous roll of 12 Edw. III., "De Superioritate Maris Angliae," for many years preserved in the archives of the Tower of London, now deposited in the Public Record Office. According to this memorandum, the king's justiciaries were instructed to declare and uphold the laws and statutes made by the kings of England, in order to maintain peace and justice amongst the people of every nation passing through the sea of England.
The earliest version of these Oleron sea laws comprised certain customs of the sea which were observed in the wine and the oil trade, as carried on between the ports of Guienne and those of Brittany, Normandy, England and Flanders. No English trans lation seems to have been made before the Rutter of the Sea, printed in London by Thomas Petyt in 1536, in which they are styled "the Lawes of ye Yle of Auleron and ye Judgementes of ye See." A Flemish text, however, appears to have been made in the latter part of the 14th century, the Purple Book of Bruges, preserved in the archives of Bruges, in a handwriting somewhat later than that of the Liber Memorandorum. Prefixed to this Flemish version is the title, "Dit es de Coppie van den Rollen van Oleron van den Vonnesse van der Zee." Certain changes, however, have been made in the Purple Book of Bruges in the names of the ports mentioned in the original Gascon text. For instance, Sluys is in several places substituted for Bordeaux, just as in the Rutter of the Sea London replaces Bordeaux. That these sea laws were administered in the Flemish maritime courts may be inferred from two facts. First, a Flemish translation of them was made for the use of the maritime tribunal of Damme, which was the chief Flemish entrepot of the wine trade in the 13th century. The text of this translation has been published by Adriaen Verwer under the title of the Judgments of Damme. In the second place, there is preserved in the archives of the senate of Danzig, where there was a maritime court of old, an early manuscript of the 15th century, containing a Flemish reproduc tion of the Judgments of Oleron headed "Dit is Twater Recht in Vlaenderen." So far there can be no doubt that the Judgments of Oleron were received as sea laws in Flanders as well as in Eng land in the 14th century. Further enquiry can trace them as they followed the course of the wine trade in the North sea and the Baltic sea. Boxhorn, in his Chronyk van Zeelande, has published a Dutch version of them, which van Leeuwen has reproduced in his Batavia Illustrata, under the title of the Laws of West-Capell in Zealand. Verwer has also published a Dutch text of them in his Nederlant's See-Rcchten, accompanied by certain customs of Amsterdam, of which other mss. exist, in which those customs are described as usages of Stavoren, or as usages of Enkhuizen, both ports of active commerce in the 15th century.