Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/894

 868 SHIPP SHIPPING SHIPP, Albert M., an American clergyman, born in Stokes co., N. C., Jan. 15, 1819. He graduated at the university of North Carolina in 1840, and was received into the South Car- olina conference in 1841. He became presi- dent of Greensboro female college in 1848, professor of history and English literature in the university of North Carolina in 1849, and president of Wofford college, Spartanburg, S. 0., in 1859, and was chosen to be professor of church history in the Vanderbilt univer- sity, Nashville, Tenn., in 1874. He has been a member of every general conference of the Methodist Episcopal church, South, since 1850. SHIPPING. The law of shipping, the law of marine insurance, and the law of negotiable paper have a common origin in the custom of merchants. This custom and its authority as- cend to a remote antiquity, and the books to which we must refer for it give us the rules of the commercial world during many ages. Many of the present rules and principles of the law of shipping have an earlier origin than anything in the common law, or indeed in any existing system of law. Even the Ro- man law, in the rubric de lege Rhodia de jactu (concerning jettison), quotes and confirms the law of Rhodes, whose commerce flourished at least 1,000 years before the Christian era. In the fragment to which we have alluded, the modern law of jettison, average, and contribu- tion is as distinctly stated as in any recent text book ; and in the title </e nautico foenore, which, however, like many other rubrics of the Corpus Juris relating to shipping, is not traceable to any earlier source than the law of Rome, we have the present rules regulating loans on bot- tomry and respondentia. Passing over several centuries, we find other still ancient but useful repositories of the customs of merchants and of the maritime law in the Consolato del mare, a collection or digest of the principal rules and usages established among commercial nations from the 12th to the 14th century, and in the laws of Oleron and the laws of Wisby, codes of maritime usages promulgated about the 12th or 13th century. Later, Le guidon, a book of the 16th century ; the Ordonnanee de la marine of Louis XIV., published in 1681, a work of the highest excellence covering the whole ground of maritime law ; Valin's commentaries upon the ordinance ; Cleirac's Us et continues de la mer ; and the writings of Roccus and Casare- gis, Italian jurisconsults of the 17th and 18th centuries, reflect the commercial usages of their respective periods, and are the abundant, au- thoritative, and often sought sources of the modern law of shipping. A ship is personal property, a chattel ; and unless some positive law interposes, it may be transferred from seller to buyer by the same forms that attend the transfer of chattels of any ojther descrip- tion ; and in fact it can hardly admit of a doubt that an oral contract suffices to pass the prop- erty in a ship, and that no written evidence of the sale is essential to its validity. Still it is the ancient usage of the maritime law to make a bill of sale or other written instrument the almost inseparable accompaniment and evi- dence of the sale, and it is convenient and proper that it should continue to be so. But apart from expediency and established usage, written evidence of the sale of a ship is made an essential condition of registration under the laws of the United States. Though the statute does not prevent the property from vesting in a purchaser under a merely oral contract, yet it renders a bill of sale a practically indispensable formality, because registration, of which it is the condition, gives to the ship all its substan- tial value as an instrument of commerce. The laws which regulate commerce confer exclusive privileges in the carrying and coasting trade on United States ships. No merchandise may be brought from any foreign country to this except in American vessels, or in vessels be- longing to that country of which the merchan- dise is the product, or from which it can only be or most usually is first shipped for trans- portation ; and no merchandise shall be car- ried from port to port in the United States by any foreign vessel unless it formed a part of her original cargo. Ships intended for the fishing or coasting trade must, if not regis- tered, be enrolled and licensed. In short, a ship that is neither registered nor enrolled and licensed cannot sail on any voyage with the privilege or protection of a national character or national papers. This national character and the benefit of it can be acquired only by com- pliance with the registry laws. The ships which may be registered under these laws are those built within the United States and owned wholly by citizens thereof, and those captured and condemned as prizes or adjudged forfeited by violation of law, if owned wholly by citi- zens of this country. No ship can be regis- tered if an owner or part owner usually resides abroad, although a citizen, unless he be a consul of the United States or an agent for and a partner in a mercantile house established and doing business here ; nor if the master be not a citizen of the United States ; nor if the own- er or a part owner be a naturalized citizen and reside in the country whence he oame more than a year, or in any foreign country more than two years, unless he be a consul or pub- lic agent of the United States. If a registered American ship be sold or transferred in whole or in part to an alien, the certificate of registry must be delivered up, or the vessel is forfeited. As soon as a registered vessel arrives from a foreign port, her documents must be deposited with the collector of the port of arrival, and the owner, or, if he does not reside in the dis- trict, the master must make oath that the regis- ter contains the names of all persons who are at that time owners of the ship, and at the same time report any transfer of the ship or of any part that has been made within his knowl- edge since the registry, and also declare that no foreigner has any interest in the ship. If