Definition
A locman is a local maritime pilot whose function was to guide vessels into harbor or through rivers, channels, and other confined or hazardous waters. The term derives from French marine law and describes a specialist distinct from the vessel's own pilot: where the ship's pilot had general charge of navigation, the locman possessed specific local knowledge of a particular port, waterway, or coastal approach and was engaged to assist in navigating that discrete passage safely.
The role was essentially that of a harbor or channel guide — a pilot of place rather than of voyage.
Why It Matters in Research
This term surfaces almost exclusively in historical maritime law sources and in cases touching on the liability of pilots, port authorities, or shipowners under older admiralty frameworks. Researchers encountering locman in historical documents should treat it as a term of French maritime law transplanted into English-language legal discourse through admiralty practice and comparative law scholarship. It does not appear as an operative term in modern American or English statutory regimes, where equivalent roles are addressed under general pilotage law without the locman/pilot distinction.
The practical trap: nineteenth-century American admiralty cases occasionally cite French marine law and its terminology when resolving questions of pilotage liability, compulsory pilotage, and contribution among co-pilots. A researcher analyzing such cases may encounter locman without gloss. The Second Edition of Black's anchors the term to Martin v. Farnsworth, 33 N.Y. Super. Ct. 260, which is the most accessible primary source connecting locman to Anglo-American judicial usage and provides context for how the French distinction was received in domestic courts.
Researchers should also note that the functional role of the locman — local expertise supplementing the vessel's own navigator — informs the broader legal question of divided or shared pilotage responsibility, which carries implications for liability allocation in collision and grounding cases. Understanding the locman concept helps reconstruct the underlying factual and legal framework when those older cases are cited as precedent.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: a pilot in French marine law, with the Second Edition of Black's adding the crucial functional detail that the locman was specifically a local pilot assisting the primary pilot in confined or hazardous waters. Burrill cites the Ordonnance de la Marine (Ord. Mar. liv. 4, tit. 3, art. 1), the foundational French maritime code of 1681 under Louis XIV, which gives the term its original authoritative grounding and signals that the concept had formal statutory recognition in French law well before it appeared in English-language legal literature.
The First Edition of Black's offers only the bare minimum — "a pilot" — which understates the term's specificity and could mislead a researcher into treating locman as a synonym for any pilot rather than a distinct functional category. The Second Edition's expansion, tied to an actual case, is the more useful entry. Burrill's citation to the Ordonnance places the term in its proper doctrinal lineage but does not discuss reception into common law jurisdictions.
None of the historical dictionaries address whether the locman bore independent liability or shared liability with the ship's pilot — a question that would have been practically significant in admiralty litigation. That gap reflects the dictionaries' vocabulary function rather than analytical function; the answer must be pursued in the case law and treatises on pilotage.
Jurisdictional Note
Locman as a distinct legal category belongs to French maritime law and has no direct modern counterpart in American or English statute. Its relevance in common law jurisdictions is historical and comparative. Pilotage functions in the United States are now governed by federal statute and state pilotage commissions, which regulate licensed harbor pilots without employing the locman terminology.