Definition
An Old French phrase drawn from the Laws of Oleron, the medieval maritime code governing sailors and shipping. Literally translated as "to remove the tablecloth," the term denotes the punishment of denying a seaman his mess — that is, withholding his food allowance or victuals for three meals. The phrase appears in Article 13 of the Laws of Oleron and represents one of the disciplinary remedies available under early maritime law when a seaman engaged in certain prescribed misconduct.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The phrase has no presence in modern English common usage.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The phrase was already archaic by the nineteenth century and confined to maritime legal scholarship even then.
Editorial note: The phrase is pure medieval legal terminology with no common-language counterpart in any era. Its literal meaning — removing a tablecloth — would convey nothing to an ordinary reader without the specialized maritime context in which it operated.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is encountered almost exclusively in historical maritime law research, specifically in scholarship on the Laws of Oleron — the twelfth- or thirteenth-century sea code originating in France that formed a foundational source for admiralty law in England and America. Researchers working in early American admiralty materials should note that the term surfaces in the appendices to Peters' Admiralty Decisions, which Burrill's specifically cites (1 Peters' Adm. Dec. App., xxvii; 2 Id. App., lxxxv). These appendices contain reproductions of the Laws of Oleron in both French and English translation and remain a primary access point in American legal collections for the underlying text.
The term has no operative significance in modern admiralty or maritime law. No contemporary court applies it, and no modern statute invokes it. Its research value is entirely historical: it illuminates the disciplinary structure of pre-modern maritime employment, the relationship between ship masters and crews, and the manner in which food and sustenance were treated as legally cognizable interests of seafarers rather than mere practical arrangements. A researcher tracing the doctrinal origins of seamen's rights — including the duty of maintenance, the right to wages, and protections against arbitrary treatment — may encounter this term as evidence of how early maritime codes structured those protections through specific, enumerated punishments.
Researchers should also be alert to transliteration and spelling variation. In Old French manuscript and early print sources, the phrase may appear in variant forms. The term is not indexed in most modern legal databases, and retrieval will depend on locating the Peters' Admiralty appendices directly or consulting treatises on the Laws of Oleron.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in agreement on all substantive points: the phrase belongs to the Laws of Oleron, it denotes denial of a seaman's mess, and it translates literally as the denial of the tablecloth or victuals for three meals. Burrill's provides the more useful entry for researchers by specifying the article number (Art. 13) and supplying the Peters' citations, which the Black's entries omit.
None of the three historical dictionaries provides context for how this punishment interacted with other disciplinary provisions of the Laws of Oleron, or what conduct by the seaman triggered its application. Researchers requiring that level of detail must go to the primary source. The historical dictionaries treat the term as a lexical curiosity — worth defining but not worth examining in depth — which reflects the term's status even in the nineteenth century as a specimen of archaic legal vocabulary rather than living doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
The Laws of Oleron had influence across English and early American admiralty jurisdictions, but this specific term has no operative application in any modern jurisdiction. Research interest is limited to comparative maritime history and the doctrinal prehistory of admiralty law.