LOG - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

LOGAuthored

The Law Mind • 833 words

Definition

In maritime law, a "log" refers to two related but distinct concepts:

1. A navigational instrument used to measure a vessel's speed through the water, from which distance traveled could be estimated. The unit of nautical measurement known as the "knot" derives from the physical log (a piece of wood attached to a knotted rope) cast overboard and timed. This usage gives rise to the term "log-book" — the record kept in conjunction with that measurement and the vessel's daily progress.

2. More commonly in legal contexts, a shorthand reference to the official log-book: the mandatory record of events aboard a vessel, required by federal maritime law to be maintained on vessels engaged in foreign voyages or meeting certain tonnage thresholds. The log-book is the authoritative contemporaneous record of a voyage and carries evidentiary significance in maritime disputes.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To disconnect from an online system or video game; to "log out."

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A Hebrew unit of liquid measure, containing approximately 2.37 gills.

Neither common meaning intersects with the maritime legal meaning. A researcher encountering "log" in legal documents should not assume the colloquial digital or measurement sense. In legal sources predating the twentieth century, "log" almost always points to maritime record-keeping or the navigational instrument; the digital sense is wholly anachronistic to any historical legal material.

Common Confusion

"Log" is sometimes used loosely to mean any record or register — a police log, a call log, a prison log — but these informal administrative records carry no uniform legal status. The maritime log-book is a distinct legal instrument created by federal statute, with prescribed contents and penalties for neglect. Informal logs in other legal contexts derive their evidentiary weight from different rules and should not be assumed to carry the same authority as an official maritime log-book.

Why It Matters in Research

The primary legal significance of this term in the Law Mind corpus is the official maritime log-book, and researchers should keep several points in mind:

Statutory threshold matters. The duty to maintain an official log attaches based on the nature of the voyage (foreign) or the vessel's tonnage and route (seventy-five tons or more, Atlantic to Pacific or vice versa). Historical sources may not track subsequent changes to these thresholds, so researchers working with materials from different eras should verify which statutory regime governed at the time of the dispute.

Prescribed contents are legally significant. The entries required — offenses, punishments, illness, injury, death, birth, marriage, seaman discharges — are not incidental. Each category connects to specific maritime legal rights and obligations. A missing entry, or an irregular entry, was itself an actionable matter. Researchers should treat gaps in a log-book as potentially meaningful, not merely as clerical omission.

Evidentiary use. In admiralty proceedings, the official log-book was treated as a business record of high reliability due to the statutory mandate creating it. Its admissibility and weight in evidence are subjects worth tracing through admiralty practice materials in the corpus.

Anderson's cross-reference to MILE signals that the log also had a technical role in nautical distance calculation. Researchers working on older navigation disputes or insurance cases may need to understand how vessel speed and distance were calculated using the log-line before modern instrumentation.

Historical Dictionary Support

Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not provide a standalone definition for LOG as a legal concept, instead directing the reader to MILE for the measurement context and providing a brief but substantive note on the log-book obligation. This reflects the period's treatment of "log" as a term whose legal content lived in the log-book requirement rather than in any abstract definition of the instrument itself.

Anderson's entry captures the core federal maritime requirement accurately for its era, identifying the triggering conditions (foreign voyage; seventy-five-ton threshold; Atlantic-Pacific route) and the categories of mandatory entries. The note that neglect of this duty carried penalties is an important signal to researchers: the log-book was not merely a best-practice record but a legally compelled one, with consequences for non-compliance that could surface in litigation.

What Anderson's does not address: the evidentiary status of the log-book in admiralty proceedings, the rules governing correction and amendment of entries, the role of the log in calculating insurance claims or freight disputes, or any distinction between the official log and supplementary records a vessel might keep. These gaps are consistent with Anderson's general style — definitional and statutory rather than procedural or evidentiary.

Jurisdictional Note

The log-book requirement described by Anderson originates in federal maritime law and applies uniformly to vessels subject to U.S. admiralty jurisdiction. State law does not typically create parallel log-book obligations for vessels in interstate or foreign commerce, though state courts sitting in admiralty may apply federal evidentiary standards to log-book records.

LOGmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

See MILE. Log-book. Vessels making foreign voyages, or of the burden of seventy-five tons or more, from an Atlantic to a Pacific port, or vice versa, must have an official log-book.¹ The entries shall be of matters occurring during the voyage, such as offenses by the crew, punishments inflicted, any case of illness, injury, death, birth, marriage, discharges of seamen. For neglect of this duty the master is punishable by fine.2

LOGn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

A Hebrew measure of liquids, containing 2.37 gills. W. H. Ward.

LOGn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

A bulky piece of wood which has not been shaped by hewing or sawing. An apparatus for measuring the rate of a ship's motion through the water. Hence: The record of the rate of ship's speed or of her daily progress; also, the full nautical record of a ship's cruise or voyage; a log slate; a log book. A record and tabulated statement of the work done by an engine, as of a steamship, of the coal consumed, and of other items relating to the performance of machinery during a given time. A weight or block near the free end of a hoisting rope to prevent it from being drawn through the sheave. Log board (Naut.), a board consisting of two parts shutting together like a book, with columns in which are entered the direction of the wind, course of the ship, etc., during each hour of the day and night. These entries are transferred to the log book. A folding slate is now used instead.  -- Log book, or Logbook (Naut.), a book in which is entered the daily progress of a ship at sea, as indicated by the log, with notes on the weather and incidents of the voyage; the contents of the log board. Log cabin, Log house, a cabin or house made of logs.  -- Log canoe, a canoe made by shaping and hollowing out a single log.  -- Log glass (Naut.), a small sandglass used to time the running out of the log line.  -- Log line (Naut.), a line or cord about a hundred and fifty fathoms long, fastened to the log-chip. See Note under 2d Log, n., 2.  -- Log perch (Zoöl.), an ethiostomoid fish, or darter (Percina caprodes); -- called also hogfish and rockfish.  -- Log reel (Naut.), the reel on which the log line is wound.  -- Log slate. (Naut.) See Log board (above).  -- Rough log (Naut.), a first draught of a record of the cruise or voyage.  -- Smooth log (Naut.), a clean copy of the rough log. In the case of naval vessels this copy is forwarded to the proper officer of the government.  -- To heave the log (Naut.), to cast the log-chip into the water; also, the whole process of ascertaining a vessel's speed by the log.

LOGv.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

, To enter in a ship's log book; as, to log the miles run. J. F. Cooper.

logverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

To log out; to disconnect from an online video game.

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