Stoertebeker and Godeke Michel, with their followers and their
fabulous treasures, and brought them to Hamburg. Tradition has it that
for three days the public executioner stood ankle-deep in the blood of
the condemned. Nevertheless, the seafaring public did not suspect the
presence of a robber behind every bush or cliff. After all, an
undisturbed voyage was the rule rather than the exception; sensational
occurrences, of course, then, as now, playing an important part in the
reports of the time.

To these social disorders must be added elemental dangers of all
kinds, such as the tides and shallows of the North Sea--the shallow
waters contiguous to the coast being chiefly navigated--dangers
against which neither compass nor chronometer was then available. Even
buoys and lighthouses were comparatively rare or inadequate at a time
when nautical knowledge itself was still extremely defective. It was
therefore not astonishing that shipwrecks were of daily occurrence and
were of course followed by all the evils of that cruel and barbarous
"Strand law" which, despite all papal edicts and voluntary treaties,
could not be abrogated, but was actually carried out by the Archbishop
of Bremen himself.

Notwithstanding all these hinderances, the sea voyage, which, by
reason of the dangers attending it, was strictly prohibited during the
winter months, was incomparably safer and pleasanter than the journey
by land. The traveller by land was strictly confined to the prescribed
highway of travel, every deviation from which was regarded as a
defraudation of the customs and was punished by confiscation of goods.
The inconveniences to which the merchant was subjected in the way of
taxes are almost incredible. As the mediæval spirit was reflected in
the confusion of coinage--nearly every petty count and every city