Of all the International conventions dealing with maritime safety, the most important is the International Convetion for the Safety of Life at Sea, better known as SOLAS, which covers a wide range of measures designed to improve the safety of shipping. The convetion is also one of the oldest of its kind: the first version was adopted in 1914 following the sinking of the titanic with the loss of more than 1.500 lives. Since then there have been four more versions of SOLAS. The present version was adopted in 1974 and entered into force in 1980.
