ABSTRACT
The Flemings were still more active traders, and the people of the great Confederation of the Hanse towns, headed by Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen, attained a position as general carriers in Northern waters comparable to that of the Venetians themselves in the Mediterranean. The Third Crusade, which brought English ships and sailors to the Mediterranean in 1190, taught many lessons to the Northern shipbuilders and navigators, and the maritime laws and customs of England, and France, and even the Hansa itself, were modelled to a great extent on those of the 'Mediterranean seaports. In the Mediterranean there was another danger to provide for-capture by the Moslem pirates and condemnation to slavery. A Charter-party made in 1263 for a voyage between Porto Pisano and Bugea, gives a very clear and full picture of how the shipowner's business was carried on, in the Mediterranean, in the thirteenth century.
