Definition
An archaic French and Law French term for a commander or leader, used in historical legal contexts primarily in two senses:
1. Commander of a fleet. In admiralty and military contexts, *capitaine de flote* (or *capitaine flote*) referred to the commander of a naval fleet or squadron.
2. Master of a vessel. In the law of marine insurance and maritime contracts, *capitaine* denoted the master or captain of a merchant ship — the individual holding legal authority over the vessel and its crew and bearing responsibility for the cargo.
The term appears in French ordinances governing maritime commerce and in English legal records, particularly those of the Exchequer, where Law French remained in professional use long after it ceased to be spoken.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A captain.
Historical common usage: Not separately attested in Webster's 1913; the English "captain" served the same function in ordinary usage.
Editorial note: The gap here is register rather than meaning. *Capitaine* and "captain" are functionally equivalent in ordinary language, but *capitaine* in legal texts is a technical term of art drawn from French maritime ordinances and admiralty practice. Its appearance in an English legal source signals a specific body of law — the French *Ordonnance de la Marine* and related commercial instruments — not merely a reference to any person in command.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering *capitaine* in historical documents should treat it as a marker pointing toward one of two distinct legal frameworks. In Exchequer records, it typically signals military or admiralty command and may appear in connection with fleet appointments or war obligations. In insurance and commercial law texts, it denotes the shipmaster in his legal capacity — a figure whose authority, duties, and liabilities are extensively defined in the French *Ordonnance de la Marine* of 1681, the source Emerigon's treatise (*Traité des Assurances*) explicates at length.
Burrill's citations are instructive here: the Exchequer memoranda from 24 Edward I place the term in a late-thirteenth-century administrative context, while the reference to Emerigon points squarely to the civil-law maritime tradition that influenced both French and English admiralty courts through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A researcher following the Emerigon citation will be working in the tradition of marine insurance law, where the master's authority to hypothecate cargo, enter into bottomry bonds, and bind the shipowner is the central legal question.
The term does not appear in common law pleading outside admiralty. Its presence in a source is itself a jurisdictional signal: you are in admiralty or in a text engaging the civil-law maritime tradition.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the sole shelf source for this entry, and his treatment is appropriately brief: he gives the French and Latin Law French derivation, provides the two principal senses (fleet commander and vessel master), and supplies two specific citations rather than a general description. This is the standard Burrill pattern for terms that function mainly as glosses on foreign-language sources.
The reference to the *Ordonnance de la Marine*, Book 2, Title 1, Article 1, is significant. That article defines the duties and qualifications of the *capitaine* of a merchant vessel and was widely treated as authoritative in European maritime law. Emerigon's commentary on it in *Traité des Assurances et des Contrats à la Grosse* (1783) was translated into English and cited in American admiralty courts, giving this French term a real, if narrow, foothold in Anglo-American legal literature.
No other standard historical dictionaries in the common law tradition — not Bouvier, not Black's early editions — carry a separate entry for *capitaine*, reflecting its status as a term used in learned citation rather than in domestic legal practice.
Jurisdictional Note
*Capitaine* as a term of art is essentially confined to admiralty and maritime law sources engaging the French civil-law tradition. It has no operative role in American state court practice and appears in English common law sources only in the specialized context of admiralty jurisdiction and marine insurance.