Abstract
For hundreds of years ships have roamed the oceans at random, serving the trades according to the prevailing supply and demand; each vessel taking care of itself, none caring about the whole transport and traffic pattern, but each one willing to assist and save unfortunate brothers in distress. This historic and very individualistic pattern of maritime transport operations, with as little interference, regulation and control as possible, is called by some ‘freedom of the sea’. In the minds of generations of seafarers there is instilled the idea that this utter freedom of operation was in essence the proper interpretation of being master under God. Away from the home port nobody could interfere in the way the ship was managed or the voyage proceeded. Even selling the ship abroad was a possibility on which the master could decide.
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