I'm in the process of taking an advanced navigation course and came across this text from the British Admiralty laws from several centuries ago. If this was not an incentive to learn, I don't know what would be.
"It is established for a custom of the sea that if a ship is lost by default of the lodesman, the mariners may, if they please, bring the lodesman to the windlass and cut off his head without the mariners being bound to answer before any judge, because the lodesman had committed high treason against the undertaking of the pilotage and this is the judgement."
-The Laws of Oleron, 1190 as quoted in Schofield
