(M690) The Code has much to say about ships. Temples owned them, as well as private persons. It was a crime, punishable with death, to steal a ship.(733) We read of fees for building or navigating various ships.(734) The responsibilities and damages in collisions and wrecks are apportioned.(735) A shipowner might hire a captain to navigate a ship for him, or might hire the captain and ship together. The usual freight included corn, wool, oil, and dates, but many other things were also carried. The wages of a captain was six _GUR_ of corn yearly. There are frequent references to ships in the contemporary letters.(736) They were named according to their carrying capacity, which was five or more _GUR_. A ship of seventy-five _GUR_ is named. They carried wood, for King Ḥammurabi ordered seven thousand two hundred pieces of _abba_ wood to be brought to Babylon, three hundred pieces in a ship. A number of boat captains or perhaps shipping agents were ordered to proceed from Larsa to Babylon and arrive with their ships in Adar. He gave orders for the furnishing of the crews. We further have a correspondence concerning the invasion of certain fishing rights by boats from another district. In the contemporary contracts we meet with several long lists of ships divided into little groups, of five, six, or seven, each with its captain named, each group under a head captain, all set down as at anchor at the port of Shamash, or the like.(737) There is a case of the hire of a boat of six _GUR_ freight by two persons for two months.(738) (M691) In Assyria, canals served chiefly for water-supply. Except when the Assyrian kings went outside their own lands to Babylonia or Mesopotamia, we hardly read of ships. Sennacherib’s ships were built abroad and served abroad. There is no hint of their ever coming up to the walls of Nineveh. The contracts only once mention a ship(739) in which booty was brought from somewhere. (M692) In the later Babylonian times there are many references to the hire of boats and their crews. They appear to be a regular conveyance of goods:(740) One shekel and a quarter of silver for the hire of a ship which brought three oxen and twenty-four sheep from the king’s son [Belshazzar], for Shamash and the gods of Sippara. Further, fifty _ḲA_ of dates for the rations of the two boatmen. Thus the receiver paid carriage and expenses. The daily hire of a boat is now one shekel, and the wages of the crew amount to half as much.(741) A boat might be bought for twenty shekels or half a mina.(742) The wages of the boatmen included corn, dates, salt, and onions. The freight was exceedingly varied as before. One boat appears to have carried fresh meat.(743)