Definition
In civil and maritime law, naulum is the freight or fare paid for the transportation of cargo or passengers by sea. It encompasses both the sum owed to a shipmaster for carrying goods and the passage money paid by passengers for sea transit. The term functions as the consideration or premium promised to the master of a vessel in exchange for carriage from one port to another.
The concept is substantively equivalent to what modern law calls freight charges or passage money, but naulum appears specifically in civilian and Roman-derived maritime authorities rather than in common law sources.
Common Confusion
Naulum should not be confused with the contract of carriage itself (the locatio conductio navis or charter arrangement), nor with the shipmaster's broader right of retention over cargo for unpaid freight. Naulum names the monetary obligation — the price of carriage — not the contractual relationship that creates it. Burrill distinguishes it as the "consideration or premium promised to the master," keeping the focus on the payment rather than the agreement.
Why It Matters in Research
Naulum is a term of civilian and Roman maritime law with no meaningful foothold in English common law sources. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in treatises on maritime law drawing from the civil law tradition — Roccus, Molloy, and similar authorities — and in Digest citations. It does not appear in standard common law pleading or English admiralty reports as a live term of art; when those sources discuss freight, they use freight, fret, or nolis.
The practical research trap is temporal and jurisdictional: if you are working in admiralty sources before the 19th century that explicitly engage civil law authorities, naulum may appear as a technical term of precision. If you are working in English common law admiralty after the 17th century, the term will have been displaced by freight without comment, and the absence of naulum is not evidence that the concept is absent.
The Digest references in the Latin sources (Dig. 30.39.1; Dig. 20.4.6) point to Roman law contexts governing legacies and hypothecation, where passage money or freight charges arose as incidental monetary obligations. These are niche research contexts — inheritance disputes involving bequests of ships and cargo, or secured transactions involving vessels — where the civilian background is essential.
Burrill's cross-reference to Roccus (Notabilia de Navibus et Naulo) is the most useful pointer in the historical dictionaries. Roccus was a standard civilian maritime authority cited in both continental and Anglo-American admiralty scholarship through the 19th century, and following that reference will take the researcher into the broader doctrinal neighborhood of freight, lien, and maritime contract as understood in the civilian tradition.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: freight or passage money paid for sea carriage. The definitions are substantively identical, with Burrill adding the most useful analytical layer by identifying naulum as the consideration promised to the shipmaster — grounding the term explicitly in contract rather than leaving it as a bare description of a payment.
Black's (both editions) notes the Greek origin, and Burrill supplies the Greek root (ναῦλον, from ναῦς, ship) directly. This etymology is not merely decorative: it situates naulum as a Latinized borrowing from Greek maritime commercial vocabulary, reflecting the eastern Mediterranean origins of much Roman maritime law. Burrill's entry is the most complete of the three and the preferred source for research purposes.
None of the historical dictionaries address the precise legal consequences of nonpayment of naulum — lien rights, abandonment of cargo, or the shipmaster's remedies — which must be pursued in the civilian maritime treatises to which Burrill points.
Jurisdictional Note
Naulum belongs to the civil law and Roman maritime tradition. It does not appear as a term of art in English common law admiralty, American federal admiralty, or modern statutory maritime codes. Researchers working in jurisdictions with strong civilian maritime heritage — notably France, Spain, the Netherlands, and their historical colonies — may find naulum or its vernacular equivalents (nolis, fret, nolo) in early modern legal sources.