Definition
A calfateur is a ship-caulker — a skilled maritime tradesperson responsible for sealing the seams of a ship's hull to make it watertight. The term derives from French marine law and appears in the context of the French Ordonnance de la Marine, which regulated the organization and obligations of maritime workers, including those involved in ship construction and maintenance.
In legal usage, the term is essentially a classification of maritime labor, identifying a recognized occupational category under French admiralty and marine law with specific rights, duties, and regulatory standing.
Common Language
This is a term of French maritime trade with no meaningful presence in modern English common usage. No Wiktionary or Webster's 1913 entry is applicable. The term should be treated as pure legal and technical jargon from the French marine law tradition.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in sources touching French admiralty law, specifically materials derived from or commenting on the Ordonnance de la Marine of 1681 (the comprehensive French marine ordinance issued under Louis XIV, drafted under Colbert). Researchers encountering calfateur in an English-language legal dictionary should understand they are reading a term transplanted directly from French regulatory law into the Anglo-American legal reference tradition — not a term that developed independently in common law courts.
The practical research trap here is scope: Burrill's entry for calfateur appears to have been corrupted or conflated in transcription with unrelated material about land entry calls and deed descriptions — a textual artifact suggesting the dictionary entry may have been typeset or compiled in error, mixing two entirely separate entries. Researchers relying on that passage should treat the second half of the Burrill entry (beginning with "found upon the land, in order to render the entry...") as belonging to a different headword entirely, likely CALL or CALLS as used in land survey law.
For maritime law research, calfateur signals French civil law influence and points toward the body of law governing port workers, shipyard trades, and maritime labor obligations under the civil law tradition rather than the common law. This distinction matters when tracing the development of admiralty law in Louisiana or other jurisdictions with French legal heritage.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term, and it does little more than identify the word as French marine law terminology for a ship-caulker, with a citation to the Ordonnance de la Marine, Book 2, Title 9, Article 1. That ordinance is a real and well-documented source — the 1681 French marine code that systematized French maritime law and influenced admiralty practice across Europe and in French colonial territories.
No other major English-language legal dictionaries of the nineteenth century (Black's, Bouvier's, Tomlin's) appear to carry this term as a substantive entry, which itself reflects the term's character: it is a term of art in French maritime regulatory law that found its way into English legal reference works as a curiosity or point of comparative law rather than as a term with operative significance in common law practice.
The Burrill entry's value is primarily as a pointer to the French source material. Researchers needing substantive content should go directly to the Ordonnance de la Marine and to French maritime law commentaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Jurisdictional Note
This term has no operative significance in modern American or English law. It is relevant to historical research in French admiralty law and to jurisdictions shaped by the French civil law tradition, particularly Louisiana. Researchers in Louisiana maritime history or comparative admiralty law are the most likely audience for this term.