Bottomry

Have you ever heard of bottomry? It's a big word that means when someone lends money to a ship owner to help them with their ship. Imagine you have a toy boat, and you want to make it bigger so you can go on bigger adventures. But you don't have enough money to buy all the things you need to make it bigger. So you ask your friend if they can lend you some money to buy those things, and you promise to pay them back later.

Well, it's kind of like that with bottomry, but for big ships that carry people and things all around the world. Sometimes ship owners need to borrow money to pay for things like repairs, fuel, or even to buy more goods to sell. And since ships can be really expensive, it can be hard for the ship owner to just pay for everything all at once.

So, the ship owner will talk to someone who has a lot of money, like a banker, and ask for a bottomry loan. The banker will agree to lend the ship owner money, but there's a catch - the ship owner has to promise to pay it back with interest, which means they will have to pay back more money than they borrowed.

But here's the really interesting part - if something happens to the ship while it's out sailing, and it gets lost or damaged, the ship owner doesn't have to pay back the money from the bottomry loan! That's because the banker knew that there was a risk involved in lending money to a ship owner, since anything can happen out at sea. So, they figured out a way to protect themselves by saying that they wouldn't need to be paid back if the ship is lost or damaged.

Overall, bottomry is just a way to help ship owners get the money they need to keep their ships going, and it gives bankers a way to lend money and protect themselves at the same time.