Definition
A French-language term appearing in historical maritime law sources, meaning wages — specifically, the earnings or pay owed to sailors and maritime workers. The term appears in the context of French admiralty law as codified in the Ordonnance de la Marine (1681), and is not a term of art in English-language common law.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow archival term with no living currency in English-language legal practice. Researchers will encounter it only when working with historical French maritime law sources, or when English-language legal dictionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries cross-reference French admiralty codes. The consistent citation across all four source dictionaries to the same passage — Ordonnance de la Marine, liv. 1, tit. 14, art. 16 — indicates the term was imported directly from French codified law rather than developed through common law doctrine.
The practical trap: a researcher scanning older English legal dictionaries may encounter LOWERS and assume it is an English maritime term or a variant of a common-law wages concept. It is neither. It is a French-language term reproduced in English dictionaries solely to gloss French statutory language. Any research need concerning sailors' wages under English or American law should proceed under SEAMEN'S WAGES, not this term.
The Ordonnance de la Marine of 1681, also known as the Colbert Ordinance, was a foundational codification of French maritime law under Louis XIV. It governed French admiralty matters for over a century and influenced maritime legal thinking broadly in Europe and in civil-law jurisdictions. References to it in English legal dictionaries reflect the period when admiralty lawyers needed working familiarity with French maritime codes, particularly in prize cases and international shipping disputes.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries — both editions of Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's — are in complete agreement: LOWERS means wages in French maritime law, and all cite identically to the Ordonnance de la Marine. There is no divergence, no evolution of meaning across editions, and no elaboration beyond the bare gloss. The uniformity itself is informative: this term entered English legal dictionaries as a straight translation note and was never developed further. None of the dictionaries situate the term within a broader discussion of maritime wage law, enforcement mechanisms, or seamen's rights — a gap that reflects the limited purpose of the entry, which was reference rather than doctrine.