The law is a vestige of English common law that views death at sea as an act of God for which shipowners can’t possibly be held liable. In the early days of shipping, that might have been true. Today, though, advances in safety—self-righting lifeboats, emergency locator beacons, and watertight holds, for example—mean that many fatal accidents on the high seas are not unavoidable or acts of God. Instead, they are often examples of gross negligence by ship captains and the companies that oversee them.
