Navigation law

“ I speak now of the free and unobstructed navigation of the river, and according to this general or public law, the right of navigation exists over every party of it. No principle is better settled or more generally admitted. ”

“ Lookouts stationed in positions where the view forward, or on the side of the vessel to which they are assigned, is obstructed by the lights or any part of the vessel, do not constitute a compliance with the requirement of the law. ”

“ While I freely concede that the owner of a ship is not by the general maritime law entitled to a general average contribution where the loss is occasioned by the fault of the master or crew, I regard the third section of the Harter act as introducing a new feature into the law of carriage by sea, and as eliminating altogether the question of negligence in navigation. ”

“ The coastal State may, where necessary having regard to the safety of navigation, require foreign ships exercising the right of innocent passage through its territorial sea to use such sea lanes and traffic separation schemes as it may designate or prescribe for the regulation of the passage of ships. ”

“ DoD Freedom of Navigation Program
The U.S. Department of Defense's FON Program is comprehensive in scope. The Program encompasses all of the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea and airspace available to all nations under international law. The Program is actively implemented against excessive maritime claims by coastal nations in every region of the world, based upon the Department's global interest in mobility and access. ”

“ But it is impossible for them to perform the duty of keeping out of the way, unless the sailing vessel is held to the correlative duty of keeping her course. Even-handed justice requires that the law of navigation should be as obligatory upon the sailing vessel as it is upon the steamboat. ”

“ Another circumstance which claims attention as directly affecting the very source of our navigation is the defect or the evasion of the law providing for the return of sea men, and particularly of those belonging to vessels sold abroad. ”

“ The second class of navigation laws includes those which deal with the navigation of any waters over which a state has any control, and embraces all that is necessary for the due use of such waters, as rules of the road, management of harbours and lighthouses, and licensing and control of pilots. ”

“ As defence, however, is of much more value than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England." [8] Before these pages issue from the press, this, undoubtedly the wisest of all the commercial regulations of Great Britain, and under which the maritime strength and colonial empire of England have risen to a pitch of grandeur unknown in any other age or country, will be numbered among the things which have been. The House of Commons, by a majority, have voted for the repeal of the Navigation Laws. ”

“ Legislators, as somebody has said, are busy making vertical laws to supplement the old-fashioned horizontal ones. In international law, especially, aerial navigation has given rise to thorny problems and it is already the subject of elaborate international agreements. ”

“ Where vessels approaching are yet so distant from each other, or where the lines of approach, though parallel, are so far apart as not to involve risk of collision, that rule of navigation has no application to the case. ”

“ With compass and charts, sextant and chronometer, he could independently travel anywhere in the world. The increasing use of electronic navigation systems has made the navigator dependent on many factors outside his control. Government organizations fund, operate, and regulate satellites, Loran, and other electronic systems. Governments are increasingly involved in regulation of vessel movements through traffic control systems and regulated areas. Understanding the governmental role in supporting and regulating navigation is vitally important to the mariner. ”

“ We think not.
In the first place, the exception excludes from the operation of the act certain vessels, irrespective of the character of the navigation in which they are engaged, canal boats, barges, and lighters. These, from their very nature, cannot be used in ocean navigation, nor be exposed to its hazards.
Then there is excluded from the operation of the act, 'vessels of any description whatsoever used in rivers or inland navigation;' the phrase is sufficiently comprehensive to include everything that floats upon water, if used in the specified way. ”

“ These rules, which are the results of the practical experience and wisdom of navigators, cannot be too strongly impressed upon the observance of those engaged in the management of vessels on our rivers, or other waters where the course of business and trade naturally confines the navigation to a particular tract or route; and it is the obvious duty of the courts to apply them strictly in all cases of collision, unless where a clear exception is established by the party seeking to excuse himself for a departure. ”

“ These may justify a rate deemed prudent navigation at one time, that would be wholly unjustifiable at another. But we feel no difficulty in saying, that, in a case circumstanced as the present one, a fog so dense that the most vigilant look-out would be unable to discern a vessel at a distance of more than sixty or one hundred yards navigation, at the time, waters frequented with sailing vessels-a rate of sixteen or seventeen miles the hour is altogether inadmissible as prudent or reasonably safe navigation. ”

“ It might be a light-house erected on a submerged sand-bank, or a jetty pushed out into the stream to narrow the water-way, and increase the depth of water and the direction and the force of the current, or the pier of a bridge standing where vessels now pass, and where they can pass only at very high water. The impediments to navigation caused by such structures are, it is true, in one sense, obstructions to navigation; but, so far as they tend to facilitate commerce, it is not claimed that they are unlawful. ”

“ Their speed is quite as great, and the navigation is no less exposed to the dangers arising from the prevalence of mist and fog, or from the ordinary darkness of the night; and the owners of vessels navigating on those waters are under the same obligations to provide for the safety and security of life and property as attaches to those who are engaged in navigating the seas. ”

“ Upon the actual meaning, therefore, of the word 'inland,' so used, it must be determined that the words 'inland navigation,' in the statute, signify only a navigation carried on within the body of the country; and doubtless, (particularly when considered, as the question must be, and is hereinafter, under the powers of Congress over commerce,) when applied to lake navigation, a navigation conducted beneath the jurisprudence of a single State. It means a navigation which, when carried on on the lakes, is not the coasting trade. ”

“ Rules of navigation continue to be applicable as long as the means and opportunity remain to avoid the danger, but they do not apply to a vessel required to keep her course after the wrongful approach of the opposite vessel is so near that the collision is inevitable. ”

“ The Canadian statute put in evidence (1 St. Can. 1880, p. 236) is entitled 'An act to make better provisions respecting the navigation of Canadian waters,' and prescribes certain rules, among them that every ship, whether a sailing ship or steam-ship, shall go at a moderate speed in a fog, mist, or falling snow, and shall not be exonerated by anything in the rules from the consequences of any neglect to keep a proper lookout, or of the neglect of any ordinary precaution, or precaution required by the special circumstances of the case. ”

“ If the middle of the river be previously occupied, and the ship is obliged to go nearer to shore in order to avoid other vessels pursuing the same track, she must run at such a slow rate of speed as to be easily stopped, so as not to endanger boats pursuing their regular and accustomed occupation. Any other rule than this would tend to the confusion rather than the safety of navigation, and put in jeopardy the lives of hundreds of people. ”

“ He must furnish motive power not only, but he must direct her location, whether on the part or the starboard side, whether she shall be the inside boat or the outside one, when and how she shall be lashed to other boats, with what fastenings she shall be secured as she is dragged through the water, whether she shall go fast or slow, when, if at all, she shall drop astern, when she shall go to harbor, how long remain there, and what shall be her course of navigation. ”

“ This was conceded to be true as a matter of fact, but the Cheif Justice demonstrated that the reason of this rule was that the limit of the tide in all the waters of England was at the same time the limit of practicable navigation, and that as there could be no use for an admiralty jurisdiction where there could be no navigation, this test of the navigability of those waters became substituted as the rule, instead of the navigability itself. Such a rule he showed could have no pertinency to the rivers and lakes of this country, for here no such test existed. ”

“ The character of the skill and knowledge required of a pilot in charge of a vessel on the rivers of the country is very different from that which enables a navigator to carry his vessel safely on the ocean. In this latter case a knowledge of the rules of navigation, with charts which disclose the places of hidden rocks, dangerous shores, or other dangers of the way, are the main elements of his knowledge and skill, guided as he is in his course by the compass, by the reckoning, and the observations of the heavenly bodies, obtained by the use of proper instruments. ”

“ All persons engaged in navigating vessels upon navigable waters, whether upon the seas or in rivers or harbors, are bound to observe the rules of navigation recognized and approved by the courts in the management of their vessels on approaching a point where there is danger of collision. ”

“ Grant that, and still the libellants suggest that the ferry-boat paid no attention to the signal; and it may be that the charge is correct; but, if so, it would not follow that the steam-tug might run down the ferry-boat, as rules of navigation are ordained to preserve life and property, and not to promote or authorize collision. Even flagrant fault committed by one of two vessels approaching each other from opposite directions will not excuse the other from adopting every proper precaution to prevent a collision. ”

“ There can be no sound reason why they should be placed upon a ground of comparative disadvantage with reference to others. Why should there be placed under a species of judicial ban a mean of navigation and intercourse which, in regard to commerce, science, literature, art, wealth, comfort, and civilization, has, in a few years, advanced the world by more than a thousand years, perhaps, beyond the point at which the previous and ordinary modes of navigation would possibly have attained? ”

“ Navigators have no right arbitrarily to assume under all circumstances that every vessel approaching which does not show both the signal lights and the central range of two white lights is a sail-vessel which is bound to keep her course, and that if she does not she may be run down and sunk.
Prior to the enactment of the sailing rules neither steamers nor sail vessels, except on the lakes, were required to carry lights of any kind, and yet the rules of navigation were substantially the same as those prescribed in the existing acts of Congress. ”

“ All we mean to decide is, that the neglect of the propeller to show signal lights did not vary the obligations of the Atlantic to observe the rules of navigation, and to adopt all such reasonable and necessary precautions to prevent the collision, as the circumstances in which she was placed gave her the opportunity to employ. ”

“ It is to be hoped that they will ever bear in mind that the safety of the lives and property entrusted to their care is the ruling principle that should govern them in the navigation of their ships, and no supposed gain in expedition or saving of time on the voyage is to be purchased at the risk of accident. ”

“ II. Theory of the claimants is that inasmuch as their vessel had come round on to the starboard tack, it was the duty of the vessel of the libellant to give way and pass to her right. General rule of navigation undoubtedly is that a vessel on the starboard tack, if closehauled, has a right to keep her course, and that one on the larboard tack, although she is also closehauled, must give way or be answerable for the consequences. ”

“ With aircraft flying over cities, towns, countries, continents, and the oceans, carrying passengers, it is becoming absolutely essential that a code of laws for aerial navigation should be adopted by the United States, and an international code should also be adopted by the nations of the earth. ”

“ While there is not complete accord on the definition of historic inland waters, [28] it is universally agreed that the reasonable regulation of navigation is not alone a sufficient exercise of dominion to constitute a claim to historic inland waters. On the contrary, control of navigation has long been recognized as an incident of the coastal nation's jurisdiction over the territorial sea. ”

“ Whenever the tug is under the charge of her own master and crew, and in the usual and ordinary course of her employment undertakes to transport another vessel, which for the time being has neither her master nor crew on board, from one point to another, over waters where such accessory motive power is necessary, or usually employed, she is legally responsible for the navigation of both vessels. ”