NEW FRONTIERS

On 23 February 1347, a Genoese cog named *Santa Maria e San Giorgio* cleared the port of Genoa bound for Bruges and Sluys. Her owner, a merchant named Manuele Zaccaria, had loaded 112 sacks of alum (worth 4,800 Genoese lire), 41 bales of silk from the Caspian, and 200 amphorae of Malmsey wine. The total value: 11,300 lire—roughly the price of three city palaces. Zaccaria did not sail himself; he entrusted the ship to a captain named Battista di Levanto and a scribe named Nicolò di Bonifazio.

The voyage was routine until 14 April, when the cog lay at anchor in the roadstead of Cádiz, taking on water and wine. A sudden *leveche*—a hot south-easterly gale—snapped both anchor cables. The *Santa Maria* drove ashore on the bar of the Guadalquivir, her keel splintering on the sand. By the time the tide fell, the hull was holed in three places and the cargo half-soaked in brine. Salvage crews recovered only 38 sacks of alum and 11 bales of silk. Zaccaria’s loss: 7,900 lire.

Back in Genoa, the news arrived on 29 May via a courier from Seville. Zaccaria did what any prudent merchant would do: he walked to the Loggia dei Mercanti beneath the Palazzo San Giorgio and began knocking on doors. He needed cash to pay the crew, replace the ship, and honour his contracts. The alum had been pre-sold to dyers in Bruges; the silk was promised to a syndicate in Lucca. If he defaulted, his credit would vanish.

What happened next is recorded in a notarized contract dated 12 June 1347, preserved in the *Cartulare* of the notary Giovanni di Pontremoli (Archivio di Stato di Genova, Not. Ant. 413, fol. 87r–88v). Twenty-seven merchants and bankers—among them the powerful houses of Grimaldi, Doria, and Spinola—agreed to *lend* Zaccaria 8,000 lire. The loan carried a stiff condition: if the *Santa Maria* (or any replacement ship Zaccaria sent) reached Sluys safely by Michaelmas (29 September), Zaccaria would repay 8,800 lire—a premium of 10%. If the ship was lost, the lenders would forgive the entire sum. They called the contract a *mutuum ad risicum maris*: a loan at the risk of the sea.

This was not charity. The lenders spread the risk: each put up 200–500 lire, none more than 6% of the total. They also demanded a sworn inventory of the cargo and the right to inspect any salvage. Zaccaria, in turn, pledged his house on the Via di Canneto as collateral. The contract was registered in the *Liber Introitus et Exitus* of the Genoese commune, making it enforceable in any court from Palermo to London.

Zaccaria bought a second cog, the *San Nicolò*, loaded the salvaged goods plus fresh cargo, and dispatched her on 18 July. She reached Sluys on 11 September. Zaccaria repaid the 8,800 lire on 3 October. The lenders pocketed 800 lire profit for three months’ risk—roughly 33% annualized, a rate that reflected the perils of the Atlantic run.

Word of the deal spread faster than the Black Death, which was already creeping up the Rhône. By 1350, Genoese notaries were drafting similar contracts weekly. Venetian merchants adopted the practice in 1362, calling it *assicuratio* (from the Latin *securus*, “safe”). The first known policy in the modern sense—fixed premium, fixed sum insured, no repayment obligation—appears in a Florentine contract of 1384, underwritten by the Datini company for a shipment of wool from Southampton to Pisa.

The *Santa Maria* wreck thus marks the pivot from ad-hoc loans to systematic risk transfer. The 10% premium of 1347 became the benchmark; by 1400, rates ranged from 8% for the Mediterranean to 25% for the Biscay run. Underwriters began meeting in fixed locations: the benches beneath the Rialto bridge in Venice, the Loggia dei Banchi in Genoa, the “insurance corner” of the Bruges belfry. Lloyd’s of London, founded in 1688, is a direct descendant.

Manuele Zaccaria never fully recovered his fortune—he died insolvent in 1369—but his misfortune laid the cornerstone of an industry that still prices the risk of every container ship afloat.