Cite as: 515 U. S. 347 (1995)
Stevens, J., concurring in judgment
ally afforded to seamen: 3 to protect maritime workers from exposure to the perils of the sea. In Wilander, 498 U. S., at 354, we endorsed Chief Justice Stone's explanation of the admiralty law's favored treatment of seamen. Chief Justice Stone wrote:
"The liability of the vessel or owner for maintenance and cure, regardless of their negligence, was established long before our modern conception of contract. But it, like the liability to indemnify the seaman for injuries resulting from unseaworthiness, has been universally recognized as an obligation growing out of the status of the seaman and his peculiar relationship to the vessel, and as a feature of the maritime law compensating or offsetting the special hazards and disadvantages to which they who go down to sea in ships are subjected. They are exposed to the perils of the sea and all the risks of unseaworthiness, with little opportunity to avoid those dangers or to discover and protect themselves from them or to prove who is responsible for the unseaworthiness causing the injury.
"For these reasons the seaman has been given a special status in the maritime law as the ward of the admiralty, entitled to special protection of the law not extended to land employees. Justice Story said in Reed v. Canfield, Fed. Cas. No. 11,641, 1 Sumn. 195, 199: 'Seamen are in some sort co-adventurers upon the voyage; and lose their wages upon casualties, which do not affect artisans at home. They share the fate of the ship in cases of shipwreck and capture. They are liable to different rules of discipline and sufferings from landsmen. The policy of the maritime law, for great, and wise, and benevolent purposes, has built up peculiar rights, privi-3 These remedies are maintenance and cure and recovery for unseaworthiness. See G. Gilmore & C. Black, Law of Admiralty, ch. VI (2d ed. 1975).
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