Such, then, were the conditions under which the Mercantile Marine was emerging during these interesting years. Like other nations, Venice began to lose her commercial supremacy soon after the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered in 1486. The future of the overseas trading was to be in the hands of Portugal and Spain, then to pass into the control of the Dutch, the French, and subsequently into British hands, as some day it may fall under the direction of the United States. But the important fact to remember all the while is that Venice, Genoa and Pisa did demonstrate to the world that civilisation, progress, literature, art, riches, exploration all depended on the merchant ship. Having once proved the truth of this idea, they have left behind for us in their contemporary buildings the most striking expressions of the wealth that is obtained only by means of the sea. FOOTNOTES: [2] See _The Rhodian Sea-Law_, edited from MSS. by Walter Ashburner. Oxford 1909. A scholarly and interesting volume. CHAPTER IV THE MERCHANT SHIPS OF THE NORTH We can desire hardly any better evidence of the existence of a Mercantile Marine than the fact that a body of laws had to be created in order to regulate that industry. We have seen that from quite early times there was in the Mediterranean a sea-law which in course of time was available for any set of circumstances that might arise in regard to trading ships. In like manner there came into being a code of maritime laws for western Europe, and this was known as the Laws of Oleron. The code was adopted by Alfonso X in the thirteenth century for the settlement of disputes in maritime affairs. It was based on the sea-law of Rhodes already referred to. Now, one effect of the crusade which Richard Cœur de Lion undertook was that he came into contact with a number of ships and seamen who had been sent from the island of Oleron to take part in the crusade. And among the officers who had come with the fleet from Oleron was one of the justiciaries of the navy. The nett result was that Richard brought home a roll of these laws, and ordered them to be observed in English waters. They had been framed for the benefit of the Merchant Service, and they were drastic. Thus if a pilot lost the ship and the merchants sustained damage, the pilot was to make full satisfaction, if he had the means; if he had no means he was to lose his head. Now, based on these laws of Oleron, came into being what was known as the “Black Book of the Admiralty,” which contained the “ancient statutes of the Admiralty, to be observed both upon ports and havens, the high seas and beyond the seas, which are engrossed upon vellum in the said book and written in an ancient hand in the ancient French language,” as a High Court Judge of the seventeenth century described them.