NAVIGATION 



4094 



NAVIGATION LAWS 



NAVIGATION, naviga' shun, the science of 

 determining the position of a ship at sea, and 

 so directing its course from place to place. Con- 

 sidering the many centuries man has ventured 

 upon the sea, scientific navigation is relatively 

 modern. Such early seafaring men as the Phoe- 

 nicians, the Carthaginians and the Greeks felt 

 their way from point to point along the coast 

 and rarely ventured out of sight of land. The 

 Vikings were hardly bolder, and the discoverers 

 of Iceland were probably the crew of a ship 

 blown out of its course in a squall. Towards 

 the close of the Middle Ages, however, naviga- 

 tion made great strides. It was the feat of a 

 brave navigator of the period the discovery 

 of America by Columbus that chronologists 

 adopted as the starting point for the modern 

 era. With the discovery of an instrument for 

 determining longitude, and later, with the in- 

 vention of a device for taking the height of the 

 sun and stars, greater accuracy in holding a 

 course was made possible. Trigonometry and 

 logarithms began to be used in calculations by 

 the beginning of the seventeenth century. 



The course of the ship is determined by the 

 use of the compass (which see). The log, usu- 

 ally heaved once an hour, registers the rate of 

 progress (see LOG). The position of the ship 

 may be determined by noting the distance cov- 

 ered in a given direction. This method, how- 

 ever, is less satisfactory than that of taking fre- 

 quent observations of the sun or the stars and 

 determining the position by reference to data 

 furnished by the Nautical Almanac, which gives 

 the position of the chief heavenly bodies for 

 fixed times at Greenwich. An accurate and de- 

 tailed chart is, of course, indispensable. In ad- 

 dition to the compass and the log, the chief in- 

 struments required are the chronometer and the 

 sextant. See OCEAN, subtitle Ocean Routes. 



Freedom of Navigation. During the period 

 of discovery, in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 

 turies, it was not only the new lands that were 

 claimed by the discoverers, but newly-found 

 portions of the sea, as well. There was a 

 "Spanish main," for instance, and Spain de- 

 manded the right to control navigation in that 

 part of the ocean. During the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, however, the principle became well estab- 

 lished that the high seas could not be claimed 

 by any one country, and that all nations had a 

 right to unrestricted navigation of them. Only 

 in the case of straits leading to inland seas or 

 of narrow, shut-in arms of the ocean has there 

 been much unfriendly controversy in recent 

 years. See WAR OF THE NATIONS. 



NAVIGATION ACTS, the name given to a 

 number of laws passed by the Parliament of 

 England in 1645 and in later years for the pro- 

 tection of British commerce. The first Navi- 

 gation Act, passed in 1645, decreed that all im- 

 portations from any country in the world should 

 be shipped into England only in vessels built in 

 England or in her colonies or in those manned 

 by English masters and mariners. The second 

 Navigation Act, passed in 1663, levied excessive 

 taxes on goods brought into British colonies 

 from all foreign countries. Later, duties were 

 levied on goods shipped between colonies, if the 

 same products could be obtained in England. 

 In 1719 Parliament condemned all colonial 

 manufactures as "tending to independence." 



Before 1761 twenty-nine acts had been passed 

 in restraint of colonial trade, including one law 

 which prohibited molasses and sugar importa- 

 tion. America suffered little from these laws, 

 owing to the custom of smuggling, which the 

 colonists looked upon as a legitimate business. 

 Several provisions of the acts were favorable to 

 American industry, especially shipbuilding, and 

 certain privileges were enjoyed by colonial manu- 

 facturers which were debarred to all others. 

 However, the restriction and suppression of 

 trade and manufacture was vigorously censured 

 by the Americans, and was one of the principal 

 causes of the Revolutionary War. 



NAVIGATION LAWS, laws intended to regu- 

 late the shipping of any country. Early navi- 

 gation laws were drawn expressly to deprive for- 

 eign ships of the right to engage in the car- 

 rying trade. The American colonies, for exam- 

 ple, were restricted to English markets and were 

 obliged to ship their goods in English vessels, 

 except where they had their own vessels. Navi- 

 gation laws, adopted by most of the maritime 

 powers and retained until about the middle of 

 the nineteenth century, forbade or restricted the 

 registration of vessels foreign built or foreign 

 owned; required the major part of the officers 

 and crew to be of the country of registration, 

 and otherwise hampered free shipping. 



These hard conditions have been much modi- 

 fied of late. In America it came to be seen 

 that rigid navigation laws, which prevented the 

 registration of foreign-built ships, were arrest- 

 ing the growth of a merchant marine. The War 

 of the Nations, which in 1914 swept so large a 

 part of the foreign carriers from the sea, re- 

 sulted in the passage of liberal laws with regard 

 to the registration of foreign-built ships; how- 

 ever, few such vessels were added to American 

 registry. See MERCHANT MARINE. 



