Marine insurance includes insurance against loss or damage to vessels, craft, aircraft, vehicles, goods, freights, cargoes, merchandise, effects, disbursements, profits, moneys, securities, choses in action, instruments of debts, valuable papers, bottomry, and
respondentia interests and all other kinds of property and interests therein, in respect to appertaining to or in connection with any and all risks or perils of navigation, transit or transportation, or while being assembled, packed, crafted, baled, compressed or similarly prepared for shipment or while awaiting shipment, or during any delays, storage, transshipment, or reshipment incident thereto, including war, rebellion and terrorism risks, marine builder's risks and all personal property floater risks, the bill said.
(5) Early policies on hull and cargo were in the form of bottomry and
respondentia. These arrangements were essentially loans, repayable with interest if the subject matter arrived safely but to be retained if there was a loss.
He carefully details the methods used to transfer capital from London to India and, more fascinatingly, the various forms in which wealth came back: bills of exchange,
respondentia on diamond securities, and Asian goods such as the fine cottons on which the East India Company allegedly had a monopoly.
An 1821 order from the Governor, (1) for instance, stated that considerable inconvenience is experienced by the European part of the community who resort to the
Respondentia [later Strand Road] from the crowds of Native workmen and Coolies who make a thoroughfare of the Walk.