Shipping was regulated by a number of minute enactments to ensure safety, to fix the relations between captain and crew, and to define the obligations and risks of the owner. The amount of cargo which each ship was to carry was established by statute and varied according to the seasons of the year, and the vessels were examined before starting on a voyage by special officers to see that these and other regulations, such as those concerning the necessary coatings of pitch and the proper amount of arms to be carried, were complied with. Piracy being very prevalent in the Adriatic, it was decreed in 1336 that each vessel employed for other than coastwise traffic should carry five cuirasses, four spears, four bows, a suitable number of arrows, and a sword, shield, and helmet for every person on board. The _personnel_ of these merchant ships consisted of the _nauclerius_ (captain or master), the _scribanus_ (accountant), the _mercator_ (the owner of the goods carried, or his representative), the _custodia_ (supercargo), the _marinarius_ (mate), the _conductus_ (ship’s boy), and a crew varying from eight to fourteen men for vessels up to a tonnage of eighty _miara_; for larger ships the necessary number was fixed in each particular case by the authorities. Members of noble families engaged in trade were constantly making voyages on their own ships, and later we find them even employed as _scribani_, and in fact a decree of 1462 in the _Liber Croceus_ established that no one could be a _scribanus_ unless he belonged to the Ragusan nobility.[208] At this time the ships were still small as compared with the great argosies[209] of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but they were swift and suitable for the purposes for which they were required. The war fleet and the mercantile marine, as at Venice, were interchangeable, and ships which in peace time served for commercial purposes were converted into warships simply by increasing the number of armed men, strengthening the bulwarks, and providing them with engines of war.