Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/633

 IN BE LONCJ IBLàND, e'fC., TRANSPORTATION 00. 6^1 �rectly affected the maritime law of the United States, and whether the rule of the statute thus made applicable to ail foreign and interstate commerce is not now the law of the Bea to be administered in the courts of the United States. It is for the court to ascertain and declare the existing law of the sea or maritime law as it prevails in the United States, and to administer that law. As pointed out so clearly in the case of The Lottawanna, above quoted, that law may be modi- fied from time to time by the adoption of new usages and principles, and especially by the adoption by maritime states, by their statutes, codes, and ordinances, of rules which, in other maritime eountries, already form part of the law of the sea as accepted and practieed upon by them. If now the United States, by act of congress, has, so far as the legislative power is comnlitted to congress, adopted this rule of the maritime law, and made it applicable to ail its extemal nav- igable waters, and to ail sea-going ships and vessels engaged in foreign and interstate commerce, the courts of admiralty cannot overlook this f act in determining the question whether this rule is now part of the maritime law of the United- States. It is, perhaps, to this indirect operation of the laws of congress regulating commerce, in showing the adhesion of the United States to principles of the general maritime law, that the observations of the court in the case of The Lottawanna were designed to be applied. It does seem to me that on a question, whether an admitted rule of the general maritime law has become adopted as part of the maritime law of the United States, the f act that within the utmost range of its power to regulate commerce congress has expressly enacted it, should be a controlling circumstance with the courts, �Other illustrations exist of the modification of the law of the sea in this mode. The rules as to the lights which ves- sels should carry at sea at night are purely artificial. They have their origin in the absolute necessity from reasons of safety for some general rules to be adhered to by ail maritime nations. This is true as to the rule of the port helm, and generally as to the rules for the steering of vessels to avoid collisions in meeting or crossing, though these rules are noe ����