If shipwrecks were more common in the past, did people shipping things have a higher expectation that their stuff wouldn’t reach its destination?

Question

Like, did they just shrug and be like “oh well, I guess we aren’t getting our pineapples this year” or was it a rare and problematic occurence?

In: Other

Answer 1

Part of the reason that spices were so expensive was to cover the cost of ships lost at sea.

Huge numbers of sailors went to sea and never returned.

The earliest biggest corporations in the world were all shipping companies, in large part so that the losses could be absorbed more easily. (The other part was monopoly power, often politically enforced.)