TABLE 8.-NAMES, LOCALITIES, NAVIGABLE LENGTHS, DEPTHS AT LOW WATER, ETC., OF NAVIGABLE STREAMS, ETC.-Continued. (e) Rivers tributary to the Pacific Ocean-Continued.

CHAPTER II.

THE EQUIPMENT EMPLOYED IN TRANSPORTATION BY WATER.

I. SHIPPING LAWS AND STATISTICS.

Section 1. Acts of Congress relating to shipping.

Included in the navigation laws of the United States are various acts in regard to vessels and their equipment and prohibiting foreign vessels from engaging in the coastwise trade. A brief survey of this legislation is of importance before taking up the development of the various kinds of vessels employed in commerce.

The first Congress under the Constitution established a system of documenting vessels, with a limitation of United States registry to vessels built in this country, and imposed discriminating tonnage. duties, directed toward the encouragement of shipbuilding and shipping interests. On September 1, 1789, Congress passed "An act for registering and clearing vessels, and for regulating the coastwise trade.” This provided for the registry of vessels built or owned in the United States and those owned by citizens of the United States May 1, 1789; for the enrollment of vessels over 20 tons, under the same conditions, for the coasting trade between collection districts, and for issuing licenses to vessels from 5 to 20 tons. This act was revised by acts of December 31, 1792, and February 18, 1793, the former dealing with the registry of vessels engaged in the coasting trade and in the fisheries. The latter of these acts provided that registered, enrolled, and licensed vessels of the United States, "and no others," should be entitled to the privileges of the coasting trade."

An act of 1817 prohibited the importation of goods except in American vessels or vessels of the country from which the goods. came, unless there was no such discrimination against American vessels by the country to which the foreign vessel belonged. This aimed to compel reciprocity. This act also made more explicit the exclusion of foreign vessels from the domestic coasting trade, by providing specifically that no merchandise should be "imported" from one port of the United States to another port in the United States in a vessel belonging in whole or in part to the subject of any foreign power.

The act of 1817 further imposed a duty of 50 cents a ton on American vessels going from one port to another (with certain exceptions),

a 1 Stat. L., pp. 55, 305.

unless three-fourths of the crew were Americans, when the duty should be only 6 cents a ton."

In 1830 the tonnage duties were repealed on American vessels of which two-thirds of the officers and crew were citizens of the United States, and the tonnage duties on foreign vessels were repealed as to those countries which abolished their discriminating duties against American vessels.

By the act of May 27, 1848, any vessel registered in the United States to engage in trade between ports of the United States was given the privilege to touch at any one or more foreign ports, customs duties to be levied only on the dutiable merchandise brought from a foreign port to the United States.

An act of June 17, 1864, provided for the enrollment and license of vessels navigating the waters of the northern, northeastern, and northwestern frontiers, and authorized vessels so enrolled and licensed to engage in the foreign trade on the frontier without registry.

In 1873 the prohibition on foreign vessels in the domestic trade was slightly relaxed by an act permitting British vessels to carry goods from one port of the United States to another on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, in accordance with reciprocal privileges for American vessels agreed to in the treaty of Washington (1871), but this privilege was subject to suspension by the President if the citizens of the United States should be deprived of the use of the Canadian canals on equal terms with Canadians.

More recent legislation has increased the strictness of the prohibition against foreign vessels. In 1886 the transportation of passengers from one port of the United States to another in foreign vessels was made subject to a fine of $2 per each passenger.c

A judicial decision held (in 1892) that the then existing legislation did not prohibit the conveyance of goods from one port of the United States to another in two separate vessels via a foreign port-the case involving a shipment from New York to San Francisco via Antwerp. This decision led to an amendment of the law to the effect that such transportation via a foreign port should be prohibited.a An act of February 17, 1898, superseded the previous legislation on this subject, and made the prohibition still more rigid. Under this act "no merchandise shall be transported by water, under penalty of forfeiture thereof, from one port of the United States to another port of the United States, either directly or via a foreign port, or for any part of the voyage, in any other vessel than a vessel of the United

a3 Stat. L., p. 351.

b13 Stat. L., ch. 130, p. 134.

c24 Stat. L., p. 81; act June 10, 1886, ch. 421.

d United States v. Kegs of Nails, 52 Fed. Rep., p. 231 (1892); affirmed by C. C. A., 61 Fed. Rep., p. 410 (1894).