Coast Lines
Saints and Sinners and the Law of the Sea
The Sea Installer Between Little Misery and Baker’s islands
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Sinners, Saints and the Law of the Sea
Salem, Massachusetts
December 15, 2024
I just attended a fascinating exhibit of Flemish art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.
It reminded me of when I did some hard time at the Fletcher School of International Law and some soft time, hobnobbing with ocean celebrities at the Law of the Sea Conference in Caracas.
International Law started with Hugo Grotius from Flanders which was a vibrant center of trade and culture in the 1600’s much like Salem during the height of our own China trade.
Flemish and Baltic trading guilds formed the Hanseatic League which didn’t want governments to interfere with their free trade.
Later, their champion was Hugo Grotius who wrote Mare Liberum and come up with the notion that the oceans should be for everyone “res omnes” and not owned by anyone, “res nullius”.
Today the laws we have for fishing, navigation, deep sea mining, siting offshore oil and windfarms, and coastal management all stem from his early work.
Prior to Grotius international law was mostly based on how far you could shoot a cannon, three miles from the shore to an invading ship.
I urge you to visit “Saints and Sinners”, the Flemish art exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum. Then I suggest you wander down to Derby wharf.
Derby was one of America’s first millionaires and donated an exquisite Flemish carving to the museum.
Today Derby Wharf is the home of the new Salem Wind Terminal. If you are lucky, you may catch a glimpse of the high-tech vessel, “Sea Installer” in port from its work installing wind turbines off Martha’s Vineyard to provide clean inexpensive electricity to hundreds of thousands of New England homes.
The Sea Installer from Salem Willows.