Definition
In French law, to hire a vessel at a stipulated price; to contract for the use of a ship in exchange for freight or charter payment. The term is the French verb form corresponding to the substantive transaction known in English maritime law as affreightment. A party who affretes a vessel enters into a contractual arrangement with the shipowner to carry goods or passengers in exchange for an agreed sum.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in older sources treating French or civil law maritime practice and in treatises bridging French and English admiralty doctrine. Researchers encountering affreter in historical legal texts should recognize it as a functional equivalent to "to affreight" in English maritime law, but the terms are not perfectly interchangeable: French maritime law developed its own doctrinal framework for charter and freight contracts that does not map cleanly onto English common law admiralty practice.
The primary research trap is treating affreter as a direct synonym for the English concept of chartering. In the French tradition, the transaction could encompass arrangements closer to what English law would distinguish as a voyage charter, a time charter, or a simple contract of affreightment — the French term covers the genus without specifying the species. Sources citing Emerigon (the leading French marine insurance treatise authority) are operating within a civil law framework; conclusions drawn from those sources may not transfer to common law jurisdictions without qualification.
Researchers working in American or English admiralty contexts from the eighteenth or nineteenth century will find affreter cited in comparative discussions, particularly in treatises attempting to harmonize French and English maritime law. It is rarely operative vocabulary in common law pleadings or judgments but appears in scholarly and treatise literature meant to illuminate the civilian background of admiralty doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the core entry: "Fr. In French law. To hire a vessel at a stipulated price; to affreight." Burrill cites Emerigon's Traité des Assurances (ch. 11, sect. 3), the authoritative French source on marine insurance and maritime contracts. The definition is spare but accurate. Burrill correctly signals that this is a term of French law, not a naturalized English legal term, and the cross-reference to Emerigon is the appropriate scholarly anchor for anyone needing doctrinal depth.
No other major English-language legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus provide independent entries for affreter, which is itself informative: the term was treated as foreign vocabulary requiring a gloss rather than as an established term of art in Anglo-American legal writing.
Jurisdictional Note
Affreter is a term of French maritime law and appears in sources governed by the civil law tradition. In common law jurisdictions, the equivalent transaction is governed under the law of affreightment and charter parties. French and Louisiana sources are the most likely contexts in American legal research.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See AFFREIGHTMENT for the English and American legal framework governing contracts for the hire of vessels and the carriage of goods by sea.