Navigation

The art, or business, or science of conducting vessels through waters, in the usual employment of them.

Navigation laws

Acts of parliament regulating the trading intercourse of foreign countries with the United Kingdom and the British possessions In general. The original navigation law, passed in 1650, under the commonwealth, prohibited all ships of foreign nations from trading with any English "plantation" (or colony), without license from the council of state. In 1661, the prohibition was extended to the mother country. At the restoration, this provision was continued by Stat. 12 Car. II. ch. 18, passed in 1660, which required also that the master and the mariners should be British subjects; the object of this act being to encourage, by the exclusion of foreign competitors, the ships, seamen, and commerce of Great Britain. But now, by various acts 1853 (16 & 17 Vict. ch. 107), foreign vessels are generally allowed a free commercial intercourse with this country and its dependencies. But upon ships belonging to any nation which refuses to concede a similar freedom to British trade, and on the goods exported therein, her majesty may, by order in council, impose such duties as may appear justly to countervail the disadvantage to which British trade or navigation is so subjected. (3 Steph. Com. 143- 147.) Mozley^W. Rules of navigation. These are systematic rules and regulations by which the movements of vessels, when approaching each other under such circumstances that a collision may possibly ensue, must be governed. Such rules have long prevailed under the general maritime law, in the absence of statutory enactments; but these have more recently been superseded by express enactment, in most of the commercial countries of the world. A leading system is that promulgated by the corporation of the Trinity House on the 30th of October, 1840, and which maybe found in full in 1 W. Rob. Adm. 488. The United States revised statutes prescribe important regulations of like purpose.