‘Proceed to the assistance of the persons in distress’: The sinking of the Titanic and the international regulation of safety of life at sea

Abstract

The International Convention on the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) was first drafted in response to the sinking of the Titanic. The 1914 convention sought international agreement on issues such as construction, navigation, communication, protection and rescue. The convention also formulated an obligation to ‘proceed to the assistance of the persons in distress’. The treaty has been interpreted both as imposing increased public and international responsibility at sea and as marking one of the origins of the duty to save lives at sea in international law. This article highlights how the convention in general and the obligation to come to rescue in particular can also be understood as a culmination of nineteenth-century maritime law, in which a combination of sovereignty, public responsibility, private authority and international law was typical.

In response to the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, an international conference on the safety of life at sea was held in London from November 1913. After weeks of meetings and negotiations, the International Convention on the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) was concluded on 20 January 1914. Repeatedly revised since then, today the convention is regarded as the most important of all international treaties concerning the safety of life and ships at sea. ¹

The convention established international regulations for the subdivision of ships, life-saving appliances, the use of wireless telegraphy, fire-extinguishing appliances, ice patrols and collisions. The convention also established the principle that sufficient lifeboats must be available to rescue all crew and passengers in the event of an accident, as well as an obligation that bound shipmasters to ‘proceed to the assistance of the persons in distress’. ² The intent and scope of the convention have typically been understood as reflecting an increased public and international responsibility for the safety of life at sea. ³ It has also been argued that this convention ‘inspired the construction of the contemporary regime regulating the said duty and continues contributing to its understanding and interpretation’. ⁴

However, the convention can also be read ‘backwards’ and contextually, pointing towards how the safety of life at sea was sought to be regulated internationally over the last part of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. This article will approach the convention accordingly: it analyses the responses to the sinking of the Titanic in general and the formalization of the duty to assist those in distress in particular within the broader nineteenth-century context of international law and maritime policy. Consequently, this article does not treat the SOLAS convention primarily as the origin of subsequent attempts at regulating safety internationally in the twentieth century, but as the culmination of complex entanglements of commerce, sovereign power, private authority and international law that preceded it.

Several meetings and conferences preceded the conclusion of the 1914 convention. The official inquests into the Titanic disaster in the United States and Britain, along with several conference preparations in various countries and the London meeting in 1913–1914, are the most significant. In 1913, the Comité Maritime International, a non-state international organization, met in Copenhagen to develop a response to the sinking of the Titanic. ⁵ In this article, I analyse the response to the accident in these international conferences and meetings. ⁶ I also trace the discussions further back, focusing in particular on the discussions and negotiations in the Comité that led to the 1910 Brussels conventions, which were formally titled the Brussels Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Respecting Assistance and Salvage at Sea and the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law with Respect to Collisions between Vessels. ⁷

The analysis of the Comité’s work enables the examination of the conflicts and entanglements between public and private power and authority in relation to the safety of life at sea and the obligation to provide assistance in rescue operations. ‘Private authority’ here implies something quite close to how the term has been used in international relations and political economy, as a term ‘intended to allow for the possibility that private sector markets, market actors, non-governmental organisations, transnational actors, and other institutions, can exercise forms of legitimate authority’. ⁸ In the case of the Comité, the authority exercised was primarily through drafting legal conventions, a type of diplomatic undertaking conducted within the framework of a non-state organization – a sort of legal infrastructure for treaty-making.

The historian Sarah Palmer once proposed the potential of a ‘maritime diplomatic history’ of the development of international maritime policy and safety regulations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ⁹ For Palmer, such a history reveals how maritime policy was formed internationally and that ‘by the early twentieth century, Britain was increasingly being forced to follow a path defined, not by other governments but by private international associations’. ¹⁰ This, she contends, significantly contributed to the understanding of British domestic policy towards maritime safety during the period. A key insight was the influence of the Comité.

Twenty years ago, Palmer found only a small amount of literature to accompany her proposed ‘maritime diplomatic history’ of international maritime policy. ¹¹ Over the past two decades, a turn towards history in international law has provided examples and opportunities to readdress nineteenth-century maritime policy from a fresh perspective. Notably, the legal scholar and intellectual historian Martti Koskenniemi identified what he considered the ‘rise of international law’ in the last decades of the nineteenth century. ¹² At the heart of his work is the analysis of the formation of the Institut de Droit International in 1873 and its subsequent activities, where the uneasy combination of liberalism, nationalism and colonialism found expression in legal reasoning. For Koskenniemi, the ‘Men of 1873’ initiated a period of professionalization of international law, during which many of its primary progenitors sought to promote (and conflate) integration and free trade, as well as the international regulation of various aspects of domestic society, and also that of European colonialism. When Koskenniemi's study was published in 2002, it challenged the established understanding of the history of international law, which had typically been bound to the history of the law of nations, diplomacy and the consent of states. ¹³ The historical discussion that followed further complicated the history of international law. ¹⁴ In the process, the privileged agency of states and lawyers in shaping international law has been challenged, disrupting the traditional narrative of the discipline. ¹⁵ Several recent works on the history of international law have also explored maritime concerns, particularly the issues of jurisdiction over ships and maritime spaces, as evident in the work of Lauren Benton and Nathan Perl-Rosenthal. ¹⁶ Recent maritime legal history has also examined the intersections and entanglements of economic practices, international law and sovereignty, as scholars have recently highlighted the significance of salvage, wrecking, security, and lifesaving for understanding maritime policy. ¹⁷ This article contributes to this literature by examining the international regulation of the duty to assist and the safety of construction, both before and after the sinking of the Titanic. It highlights how forms of private authority, limited liability and a particular form of private–public law-making were retained as part of the first SOLAS convention.

Legal trespassing

In London on the afternoon of 13 November 1913, the Belgian representative Louis Franck voiced his concern regarding the codification of the obligation to assist those in distress at sea. Frank intervened on the second day of the conference, even before the conference began its real work on detailed prescriptions and articles. However, to Franck, it was not primarily the obligation that caused him problems, as he was all in favour of it being legally formalized. His concern was about a potential legal conflict. He expressed this as follows:

This Conference is aiming at arriving at an international Convention. Now, it is a settled rule that one international Convention should not trespass upon the ground already covered by another Convention. As you are all aware, there is an international Convention on salvage at sea which is already in existence and on behalf of which I am speaking, because I happen to have been the General Reporter of that Conference. This Convention was signed in Brussels in 1910 by twenty-three nations, and has already nearly everywhere come into force. By this Convention it was enacted for the first time that the moral obligation of seamen to assist one another when in peril on the seas was also a legal obligation, a legal duty, the sanction of which is its punishment as a criminal offence. ¹⁸

Franck argued that the questions brought before the conference in London ‘seem to trespass upon the ground already covered by that Brussels Convention’. ¹⁹ The article Franck was thinking of – Article 11 in the convention – read as follows:

Every master is bound, so far as he can do so without serious danger to his vessel, her crew and her passengers, to render assistance to everybody, even though an enemy, found at sea in danger of being lost. The owner of a vessel incurs no liability by reason of contravention of the above provision. ²⁰

What was at stake? For Franck, the enacting countries of the Brussels Salvage Convention of 1910 had declared that failing to come to the assistance of a ship in distress was illegal. There was no need for a similar obligation to be part of a future convention concerned with the safety of life at sea. The corresponding Brussels Collision Convention also made it illegal to fail to render assistance to a ship after a collision. For Franck, the Brussels conventions were already doing what was proposed as part of a new treaty drawn up after the Titanic disaster.

Since the late 1880s, Franck had practised as an Antwerp maritime barrister. ²¹ He was among the group of Belgian lawyers, shipowners and insurers who formed the Comité Maritime International in 1897, thereby establishing a private international organization for the shipping industry. While the members were primarily national associations of maritime law, which in turn were typically made up of lawyers, shipowners and insurers, the formation of the Comité was part of a general professionalization of international law, alongside the Institut, which has been of so much interest to Koskenniemi. The Comité members comprised a combination of so-called titular members and delegates from national associations. The organization was formed by – and composed of – what David Kennedy recently described as ‘people with projects’, who, through their engagement with international maritime law, made and remade both themselves and the structures within which they operated. ²²

After the formation of the Comité, Franck served as the organization's secretary. He was the progenitor of the objective of the Comité, which was formulated as a ‘new Code of the Sea’. In 1913, in a rather lofty fashion, he argued:

The times are not far off when the most important matters of Maritime Law, which formerly gave rise to innumerable conflicts and difficulties, owing to the differences between the national systems of law, say, in Collision, Salvage, Shipowners’ liability, Mortgage Ships and Maritime Liens, will, all over the world, be governed by the same set of rules, extending in all ports, on all seas, and before all Courts, the same protection to the ships of all flags. ²³

For Franck, the ‘new Code of the Sea’ was envisioned as one that private interests should bring about:

The new Code of the Sea, when completely in existence, as I am sure it will be, will bear the stamp, not of the theorist or the lawyer, but of the commercial man who is to benefit or to suffer by this law, as by all other commercial laws, and, therefore, is well entitled to have on its preparation and drafting an influence which is too often refused to him in international affairs and which, if more frequently permitted and resorted to, would always lead towards Goodwill and Peace amongst the Nations. ²⁴

Franck and many others participating in the Comité envisioned international legal uniformity to safeguard against liberal politics and promote free trade. The envisioned uniformity would reduce the differences that existed, in particular, between the significant maritime power of the day – Britain – and continental Europe.

The Brussels conventions of 1910, which addressed collisions and salvage, were the most significant tangible outcomes of the Comité's work. The formal adoption of the conventions internationally, however, was a result of the Belgian state taking on the work of the Comité, putting it before what was named the Brussels Diplomatic Conferences on Maritime Law. ²⁵ The relationship between the Comité and the Belgian government was strong. For example, the Comité’s president was Auguste Beernaert, a lawyer, who served as the Belgian prime minister from 1888 to 1894. Franck would readily admit that the Comité had no power on its own: ‘We have no official authority of any nature’. ²⁶ Nevertheless, many members of the Comité also served as delegates at the diplomatic conference, blurring the line between state officials and the shipping interests that dominated the organization. Beernaert and Franck both participated, for example.

Several international conferences on maritime affairs were organized in the 1880s – in Antwerp and Brussels in 1880 and 1885, and in Washington, DC in 1889 as the International Maritime Conference. Over the same period, the International Law Association issued several rules concerning shipping and maritime transport. During the conferences in Antwerp, Brussels and Washington, several detailed regulations relating to navigation rules were established. It was then up to individual states to implement them in national laws. The 1889 conference also established the view that several concerns were deemed unsuitable for international standards, such as rescue, manning and construction, regardless of whether they were British rules or not. Furthermore, a proposal to establish a permanent international body to address shipping's needs was also deliberated. Nevertheless, the plan for an international organization was rejected, which led to shipping deviating from the general trend towards permanent international organizations and unions that prevailed during the period. The postal and telegraph services, as well as railways, for example, were all organized with international bureaus or unions in the second half of the nineteenth century. The coordinated effort of the private Comité and the Belgian state compensated for this lack of an international organizational structure concerned with maritime law.

The Comité organized two conferences – one in Paris in 1900 and another in Hamburg in 1902 – where drafts of both the Collision Convention and the Salvage Convention were drawn up. The final text was established by the diplomatic conference of government representatives in Brussels, which met in 1905, 1909 and 1910. ²⁷ National governments gradually ratified the 1910 conventions, marking an effective legal pathway from private interest to international rule-setting and subsequent national adoption and ratification.

When the Comité gathered in Copenhagen in 1913, the number of ratifications of the Salvage Convention was considered a success and a memorable event in the history of maritime law. It was described as ‘forming the first chapters of the new International Code of the Ocean’. ²⁸ However, the Copenhagen meeting of 1913 was primarily convened to discuss the Titanic: ‘No deliberative body is better qualified than our own to consider the matter in question’, it was argued. ²⁹ The reason was explicitly related to the Salvage Convention:

By establishing at its conferences the legal obligation to render assistance to persons in peril at sea, the International Maritime Committee had laid the foundations of an international system of law in regard to safety in maritime transport. It was therefore in the logical and natural sequence of events that this question [of the need for international agreement] was placed upon our agenda (italics in original). ³⁰

Charles Le Jeune, the incoming president of the organization and a Belgian marine underwriter, argued as follows concerning possible legal trespassing:

[T]he aim of the International Maritime Committee when putting this question of Safety of Life at Sea on the agenda paper, was not to trespass upon the grounds of diplomacy or Official Departments, but to give to business men the opportunity of ventilating their views in an international and representative meeting in order to assist and help the work which is being undertaken by Governments. ³¹

Le Jeune was eager to express the intention of not trespassing on state affairs. The year after, Franck's concern was the opposite – that state affairs were encroaching on the Comité.

On being found

What ensued after Franck's intervention in London in November 1913 was typical of international conferences: a quarrel over terminology. For the French, the article of the Brussels Salvage Convention did not imply anything similar to what was on the table in London, as ‘being found’ was hardly equal to picking up a distress call on the wireless. The French delegate Charles Guernier argued as follows: ‘Le mot “trouver”, pour ceux qui parlent le français – et je sais que M. Franck le parle admirablement – signifie voir avec ses yeux, rencontrer celui-là à qui il faudrait porter secours [The word “trouver”, for those who speak French – and I know that Mr. Franck speaks it admirably – means to see with one's own eye's, to encounter the one to whom help should be brought]’. ³²

Guernier maintained that the words used – ‘trouvée en mer’ – could not have so broad a meaning. To maintain that a ship 300 or 1,000 miles distant from a vessel in distress and hearing its call could not in any proper sense be understood as to have ‘found’ the vessel. The French addressed the Titanic's modernity: the wireless made rescue depend on the ability to speak into the air. Those in distress could, at least in theory, be rescued from afar. ³³ Even the idea of ‘being found’ was a question of communication.

Franck countered the argument over the term ‘trouver’ by pointing to the origin of the formulation, which was based on a French intervention in the preparatory work of the Brussels conventions back in 1905. According to Franck, the term ‘trouver en mer’ had been chosen deliberately because it implied picking up a distress call on the wireless. ³⁴ ‘Being found’, so to speak, was, in the terms of the convention, a matter not solely of making visual contact, but also auditory contact. Indeed, ‘to be found’ would, to Franck, depend on the ability to make another person aware that you were in danger. It was this awareness that was the key. The article that was agreed on reflected this, as it also enforced the installation of wireless telegraphy on board ships and required that ships maintain what was termed ‘a continuous watch’, conflating the sensory possibilities of being aware of anyone in distress.

The quarrel over Franck's intervention holds several different meanings beyond that of the modernity so apparent in the Titanic accident: it was both personal and political, as Franck was (among other things) a committed Flemish nationalist and very prominent liberal politician, actively participating in the struggle for political, cultural and linguistic equality in Belgium. It is little surprise that French delegates found an opportunity to commend Franck on his French skills (‘parle admirablement’). Franck, however, was also competent to translate between German, English, Italian, French and Dutch – a task he typically performed in the meetings of the Comité.

The linguistic quarrel over what was meant by ‘being found at sea’ was, nevertheless, primarily about the scope of the future convention. Furthermore, if the outcome of the London discussions was to diminish the scope of the Brussels Salvage Convention, its effectiveness would be significantly compromised. Indeed, it could even undermine the prior understanding that assistance at sea was considered a legal obligation.

In the SOLAS article agreed upon in 1914, a clause regarding the Brussels Salvage Convention was added, which simply stated that none of its provisions would prejudice it, and it certainly did not limit the interpretation of that convention to cases where ships were in visual contact with ships in danger. This safeguarded the achievement of the Comité and preserved the importance of the Brussels conventions beyond the issue of salvage and collisions. As a consequence, the SOLAS convention also retained a process typical of the time, one where the structure facilitated the influence of the shipping interests represented by the Comité – a sort of public–private partnership that served as an infrastructure for law-making.

Salvage and liability

Wrecks have always been puzzling legal objects. For the historian Francesca Trivellato, the norms that shaped issues of ownership and compensation in the early modern period held a ‘liminal quality’, operating between different legal traditions and subject to varying political impulses. ³⁵ Later, conflicts over salvage operations and compensation reveal the numerous political and legal entanglements that arise when foreign ships are salvaged and assisted. Differences between national legislations were often at the heart of disputes, and wreck laws were never settled or unified internationally. They remained ‘liminal’, as evidenced by repeated discussions over whether the legal status of wrecks was determined by the flag, the port of destination or the waters where the distress occurred. Further complications arose from collisions between ships of different nationalities on the high seas, particularly when refuge was sought in ports in different states. Many legal commentators and scholars of the day regarded salvage as particularly chaotic and a legal mess, in which the rules and legal realities were detrimental to maritime commerce and shipping. ³⁶

To overcome disunity and reconcile maritime law across Europe, salvage was one of the primary tasks of the Comité from its formation. ³⁷ A frequently repeated argument was that the international nature of shipping favoured the unification of maritime law, as ships regularly traversed maritime and legal boundaries. This drive towards unification was also part of a liberal political impulse, and its legitimacy drew on a shared interest in free trade among the Comité’s participants.

The 1910 Salvage Convention resulted from years of debate and discussion among participants in the meetings of the Comité and at the Brussels diplomatic conferences, following years of negotiations and numerous drafts and propositions. According to one of the few legal studies of the convention, one of the most critical concerns of the preparatory conferences of the Comité was the issue of making it an obligation to come to the assistance of those in distress. ³⁸ It was repeatedly discussed whether it made sense to include a general obligation to come to the rescue – in Paris in 1900, in Hamburg in 1902 and, finally, at the Brussels diplomatic conferences in 1905 and 1910.

In a recent study by Irini Papanicolopulu, the duty to save life at sea is portrayed as a ‘rule strongly desired by States and the maritime community’, to the extent that it could be understood as ‘applicable international law, arguably as far back as 1885 and certainly by 1899’. ³⁹ However, several fault lines are still discernible: the Comité members voted down propositions similar to this in Paris in 1900, only to reintroduce them at a meeting held in a diplomatic capacity, in Brussels, in 1905. ⁴⁰ Over the years, it has been repeatedly questioned whether making it a legal requirement was appropriate, and to what extent this would improve or hinder the success of the convention in general.

The last clause in the article of the Salvage Convention stated that shipowners would incur no liability if their ship failed to render assistance. This reveals another important issue to many members of the Comité: whereas shipmasters would be held liable if the ship they captained failed to render assistance, the owner was shielded from such responsibility. In cases where assistance and salvage were not provided, a veil was drawn between the shipowner's business and the shipmaster's acts. This covered all sanctions, and the owner of a ship that failed to come to the assistance of those in distress could not be sued.

This liability clause coincided with a more general approach to unifying laws concerning the limitation of shipowner liability within the Comité. Shipowner liability, in all its details and specificities, was also something of high legal theory and significant international differences, such as the fundamental difference between the British conceptualization of the limited liability of the shipowner and the German approach, where liability was ship-bound. The Comité failed to agree on a set of unified rules of liability for a long time. The clauses that were made part of the Salvage Convention could, in a similar fashion, be understood as a makeshift move to limit liability in specific circumstances.

Another important issue, which attracted considerable interest during the 1910 Brussels conference, was the question of rewards being paid for rescuing lives. There were several objections of both a moral and practical nature relating to the payment of an award. Some representatives expressed that they considered the duty to be a moral obligation to preserve life and argued that it would be unethical to expect payment for this. The final convention stated: ‘No remuneration is due from persons whose lives are saved, but nothing in this article shall affect the provisions of the national laws on this subject’. ⁴¹

Nevertheless, it was agreed that if a value was salvaged, remuneration to those undertaking actions to preserve life could also be paid. A British initiative established the final section, while the French upheld the view that ‘the rendering of assistance to people who are in danger is a moral duty for which one cannot be remunerated’. ⁴² Those who saved human lives were given a right to remuneration when value was also salvaged from the ship and cargo. Furthermore, those saved had no individual liability for this reward.

Safety of construction

Following the sinking of the Titanic, calls were made to introduce stricter construction rules. In Britain, politicians argued that watertight compartments and bulkheads should be enforced. More stringent requirements for constructing large passenger steamers were repeatedly called for. ⁴³ However, in terms of public and state regulation of ship construction, the differences among the major maritime states were significant. In many states, public regulation had, over the nineteenth century, primarily focused on loading by setting load lines and freeboards. ⁴⁴ However, in terms of implementing state regulations concerning construction, the practices varied widely. For example, British regulations on bulkheads remained a voluntary recommendation, even after significant discussions had taken place since the 1890s. In contrast, German regulations enforced formal rules on the use of subdivisions and bulkheads from the mid 1890s. However, the regulation of building rules and construction was also an issue of private authority through the system of classification societies. This was an established institutional arrangement where private companies or societies not only organized the rating and inspection of ships, but also set the rules for construction, such as the use of materials and dimensions. Over the nineteenth century, classification societies were established in many of the major maritime states, ranging from the British Lloyd's Register to the French Bureau Veritas. When the Comité met in 1913 to discuss the post-Titanic regulation of safety, it agreed on a statement that made the importance of retaining the classification system obvious:

In view of the importance for the safety of life at sea of the continuous advance in naval construction and of the very considerable services which have been rendered in this respect by the great Classification Societies, and in view of the fact that any regulations which would hamper the progress of naval construction would do more harm than good; the Conference is of opinion that an international agreement of the safety of navigation would usefully be directed to the formation of general rules in matters of wireless telegraphy, watertight compartments, lifeboat and life-saving apparatus, and deck loads. ⁴⁵

At the international conference in London from 12 November 1913 to 20 January 1914, the official delegations of both Germany and Norway included the chief executives of their national classification societies – Germanischer Lloyd and Det Norske Veritas, respectively. France and Italy also enlisted representatives of classification societies as experts. They all participated in the long and detailed discussions on a set of international rules, particularly regarding the subdivision of ships.

After lengthy discussions, the regulations of the SOLAS convention established a system for setting the spacing of traverse bulkheads. ⁴⁶ Committee member Archibald Denny, the owner of the Denny shipyard, one of the world's largest shipbuilders at the time, termed the result an ‘orderly international sub-division’. ⁴⁷ He hailed the result as a first in terms of international technical cooperation and standardization. Johannes Bruhn, head of Det Norske Veritas and part of the Norwegian delegation in London, found the result to be a combination of three approaches: ‘in form, it is French, the method of calculation is English, and the practical results are German’. ⁴⁸ He was not as impressed as Denny. However, the result was also so general that it could hardly be accused of ‘hamper[ing] the progress of naval construction’, as feared by the Comité.

During the discussions concerning bulkheads, it was also decided that the convention should not determine ‘the amount of stability which a vessel ought to have in order to be safe’, as cited in the minutes. It was deemed ‘not practicable’ and something that the shipowner should determine at loading. The agreement that stability calculations lacked practicability concealed a more principled discussion: over several meetings of the subcommittee that was assigned the task of coming up with construction rules, several motions were put forward to stop any discussions on stability effectively, and even to refrain from ‘embodying any reference to the question’ in the final report. ⁴⁹ In particular, Bruhn intervened repeatedly to limit the use of stability calculations and construction criteria. His argument against such calculations was that ‘the question of stability calculations was one for owners, and not one for the conference to deal with’. For him, ships would not become safer if stability calculations were made compulsory as part of the construction criteria. He deemed most stability calculations to be of little value to the shipmasters also. ⁵⁰ By refusing to formalize any stability calculations as part of construction regulations, and even to make it mandatory to convey the information about them to shipmasters, the convention placed the responsibility for the stability of a ship solely on the shipmaster. In this way, the convention retained the division of responsibility typical of much of the regulation of safety at sea that prevailed during the later part of the nineteenth century.

Conclusions

During a meeting of Nordic parliamentarians in late June 1914, just days before war tore Europe apart, the Swedish parliamentarian and social democrat Erik Palmstierna argued for the centrality of small states in organizing international society and developing international law. ⁵¹ For him, peaceful coexistence also hinged on the work of the Comité and the Brussels conventions, where the importance of a small state like Belgium was evident. However, he also had reservations about the legitimacy of the rules developed by this particular organization, as he remarked that ‘one could question whether it is suitable to entrust shipowners, engineers, insurers and lawyers to write these international laws, in particular when social concerns are part of the issue’. ⁵² For Palmstierna, the private and closed process was a cause for concern and lacking in legitimacy.

Palmstierna's argument is closely aligned with the analysis of this article: the international rules that codified the obligation to rescue, assist and salvage those in distress were, at first, formulated and discussed among shipowners, engineers, insurers and lawyers, who regularly met with the ambition of ‘unifying’ maritime law within the Comité. At the core of their project was the idea that a new code of the sea should be formulated by those who ‘suffered’ from the disunity of maritime affairs – who, for them, were precisely themselves.

However, the sinking of the Titanic made it apparent that it was primarily those who lost out economically due to an accident at sea, rather than all those harmed or lost in a shipping catastrophe, such as mariners and passengers, who tried to formulate a new code of the sea. The 1914 convention did not immediately alter this. In matters such as rescue, liability, salvage and construction, the structure of the international regulation of the safety of life at sea retained a mixture of legitimating private authority, as evident in the rules concerning both rescue and construction.

Although the 1914 convention was signed by Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden and the United States, it never entered into force, owing to insufficient ratifications following the outbreak of war in July 1914. Just a few months after its finalization in London, the sea was increasingly becoming a theatre of war. A world war replaced the peaceful development and coexistence envisioned by Palmstierna. The non-governmental internationalism of the Comité and the international diplomatic agreement of the convention were put on hold.

When the Comité finally met again in 1921, its president, Le Jeune, had passed away, and Franck had succeeded him. He maintained this position while serving as a colonial governor in the Congo and eventually as a financial administrator, including as the governor of the Central Bank of Belgium. By then, Franck was presiding over a Comité that was less able to exert influence. The old dream of a new order of the sea, won from private interests and coordination, was still being carried forward. Neither the League of Nations nor the United Nations incorporated the legal ordering of the sea into their realms. For example, when the SOLAS convention was revised in 1929, the principle that obliged one to ‘proceed to the assistance of the persons in distress’ was retained. In 1948, the procedure for acting on distress messages was also retained and, eventually, the convention became an essential part of the work of the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization. The distinction regarding the jurisdiction of the Brussels conventions of 1910 was also retained, embedding the private authority of salvage as a key part of the international obligation to aid ‘persons in distress’.