Definition
The charge paid for the carriage of passengers by ship; the fare or freight due to a shipowner or carrier for transporting passengers by water. The term is closely related to naulum, the Latin source term denoting passage money or freight more broadly, which encompasses cargo as well as passengers.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not listed as a standard modern English word.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The freight of passengers in a ship.
The historical legal and common meanings are effectively identical here, both derived directly from the same nautical trade context. The term never developed a divergent popular meaning because it fell out of general use before modern common English usage could distinguish itself from the legal sense.
Why It Matters in Research
Naulage is an archaic term unlikely to appear in modern American or English case law but relevant in three research contexts: admiralty and maritime law history, early commercial shipping disputes, and Roman and civil law sources that influenced admiralty doctrine.
Researchers working in historical admiralty materials should note the cluster of related Latin terms that appear in proximity to naulage in historical sources. Bouvier's cross-reference to naulum is the more functional research term when tracing this concept through civil law and early admiralty treatises. Naulum appears in Parsons on Maritime Law and in Benedict on Admiralty — both standard authorities in 19th-century admiralty research — while naulage itself is essentially a vernacular Anglicization that functions as a gloss rather than a term of art with independent doctrinal weight.
The related term nauta carries separate significance in admiralty law: it denotes either a shipowner who operates a vessel (exercet navem) or, more broadly, any person aboard engaged in navigation. Confusion between the freight obligation (naulage/naulum) and the person obligated to carry (nauta) is possible in compressed historical dictionary entries like Rapalje & Lawrence, where all three terms appear consecutively without clear delineation.
Researchers tracing the liability of carriers by water for passenger safety will find that naulage sits at the intersection of passage money and the contractual relationship between carrier and passenger — a relationship that generated significant admiralty doctrine regarding the duties owed in exchange for the fare paid. The Digest of Justinian (referenced by Bouvier) is the foundational civil law source and worth consulting when the goal is to understand what obligations attached to the receipt of naulum under Roman law, since American admiralty courts drew on civilian sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical dictionaries converge entirely on a single, spare definition: the freight of passengers in a ship. All four cite Johnson's Dictionary and Webster as their authorities, suggesting this was never a term with robust independent legal development in the common law dictionaries — it was borrowed from lexicography rather than generated by litigation or statute.
Bouvier's is the most substantive source, redirecting the reader to naulum and providing citations to Parsons, Benedict, and the Digest. This cross-referencing structure reveals that naulum, not naulage, was the operative term in admiralty treatises, and that naulage was treated as its English-language equivalent rather than a distinct legal concept. Rapalje & Lawrence adds the contextually useful related terms naute (sailors; carriers by water) and navagium (a feudal duty on certain tenants to carry their lord's goods by ship), situating naulage within a broader vocabulary of maritime obligation that researchers may encounter in medieval English legal records.
No historical source provides case citations, statutory references, or doctrinal elaboration specific to naulage. This absence is itself informative: the term describes a concept rather than a legal rule.
Jurisdictional Note
Naulage as a term is not found in modern American or English statutory frameworks. Its relevance is confined to historical admiralty and maritime law research, where civil law influences were strongest. Jurisdictions with civilian legal traditions (Louisiana, Quebec) may present related terminology drawn directly from the Latin naulum rather than the Anglicized form.