Maritime Law
the system of law governing the operations of navigation and trade on the sea or inland waters.
The laws of the sea are largely based on practices that were in vogue on the Mediterranean in Roman times and grew into established usages during the period of medieval commerce. The ordinances, customs, and usages which received the recognition of the Hanseatic League, and the marine ordinances of Louis XIV., had great influence in determining the shipping laws that were to prevail in later times.
In England maritime law has developed from the decisions of the courts of admiralty jurisdiction, and these, with the decisions of the Federal courts of the United States, are the basis of the maritime law of the United States. Damages committed in the course of trade and navigation on navigable waters are the proper subject matter of maritime law, and the test for deciding whether a tort or common-law wrong is of a maritime nature is the place where the act has been committed. Maritime law may enforce contracts, and may give decisions in prize causes during time of war.
MARITIME PROVINCE (Primorskaya Oblast), a province of Russia which, when it included Kamchatka Peninsula, Northern Sakhalin, and some islands, had an area of over 700,000 square miles.
A rearrangement of boundaries resulted in this division-Primorskaya Province: area, 266,486 square miles; pop., 631,600.
Kamchatka Province: area, 502,424 square miles; pop., 41,400. Sakhalin MARIUS Province: area, 14,688 square miles; pop., 34,000. The entire area in question extends from Korea to the Arctic Ocean. Agriculture is carried on in Primorskaya Province, and the Amur and Usuri rivers afford excellent fish ing for an increasing population. Capital, Khabarovsk; chief city, Vladivostok. MARITZA (mä-rēt'sä) (ancient Hebrus), a river of European Turkey, rising in the Balkans, and flowing E. by S. past Philippopolis to Adrianople, where it bends and flows S. by W. to the Gulf of Enos in the AEgean; length 270 miles; it is navigable for small boats to Adrianople.
MARIUPOL (mä-rē-ö'pol), the seaport for the S. Russian coalfield, on the Sea of Azov, 65 miles W. of Taganrog; it was founded in 1779 by Greek emigrants from the Crimea, and exports coal, wheat, linseed, etc. Pop. about 53,000.