Bottomry

Looking at admiralty court records (from 1839 and 1840) introduced me to some new words...

Bottomry is sort of like mortgaging a ship and/or its cargo. Ship owners strapped for cash for needed repairs would in effect mortgage the ship to raise funds needed for repairs until the ship could deliver its cargo, at which point the funds would be repaid. (I was not able to find any really good links describing the term -- Wikipedia for example only has a stub entry for it.)