THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF MARINE INSURANCE. By G. E. MARTINDALE, Secretary, Thames and Mersey Marine Insurance Company, A Paper read before the Insurance Association of Manchester, 21st November, 1906. MARINE Insurance is the senior branch of the various systems of insurance, and yet, in the commercial history of the world, it is essentially a modern growth. In the preamble of a statute dealing with Marine Insurance passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it is spoken of as having existed amongst us "time out of mind," but Park, the earliest writer on the subject in this country, traverses the statement, and gives it as his opinion "that prior to the reign of that princess very few insurances had been effected." However this may be, we may urge that Marine Insurance was not very generally known in the latter part of the sixteenth century; and we may congratulate ourselves on the fact, otherwise we might be the poorer by the loss of one of our great plays, for Shakespeare bases his play of "The Merchant of Venice" on the monetary difficulties of the wealthy merchant Antonio, who had the whole of his fortune at stake in his various argosies, which were all reported to be lost. You will recall Shylock's words: "Yet are his means in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another to the Indies: I understand, moreover, upon the Rialto he hath a third at Mexico, a fourth for England; and other ventures he hath squandered abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land rats and water rats, water thieves and land thieves, I mean, pirates; and then there is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks;" and when Antonio had failed to pay the monies due, and his enemy would have his bond, Bassanio, hearing of it, cries: "Have all his ventures failed? What, not one hit? From Tripolis, from Mexico, and England, From Lisbon, Barbary, and India? And not one vessel 'scape the dreadful touch Had Shakespeare been familiar with the present practice, and had the conditions which prevail to-day been customary at that time, he would not have presumed to harrow our feelings and call forth our sympathy for the sad plight of this good and honourable merchant, for he would have known that Antonio need not have been in such straits. As a wise and prudent man, Antonio would have insured, probably over-insured, and to obtain the required loan he would merely have to deposit his bill of lading and policies of insurance and a substantial sum would have been placed at his disposal, whilst had the tale of disasters proved true he would later have had interesting interviews with his underwriters, and would have emerged therefrom even more wealthy than had his ventures been successful. THE ORIGIN OF MARINE INSURANCE. The origin of Marine Insurance is lost in obscurity, and the exact date of its birth and even the peoples who first invented this valuable system are unknown. Much ingenuity has been expended in vain attempts to prove that the Rhodians or the Phoenicians knew and used some form of Marine Insurance, or that it had a Grecian, or at least a Roman source, and could thus boast of aristocratic descent; but nothing conclusive has ever been discovered. With some writers it is a matter of faith, and they hold that certain passages in the classics prove what they wish to believe. Thus the great French writer, Emerigon, considers it undoubted that the Romans knew and practised this kind of insurance, though he admits that the law is silent on the point. None of the passages relied on show that any system had then been elaborated which bears any resemblance to Marine Insurance as we understand it, and we have no direct evidence that it prevailed amongst any commercial community until after the first ten centuries |