Definition
In civil law, the master or commander of a ship; the captain of a man-of-war. The term denotes the individual holding supreme authority over a vessel, responsible for its navigation, crew, and cargo under the legal framework inherited from Roman maritime tradition.
Why It Matters in Research
Navarohus is a term of Roman civil law origin and appears almost exclusively in historical legal texts, glossaries, and treatises drawing on the civil law tradition. Researchers encountering it will do so in pre-modern sources — particularly those dealing with admiralty, maritime law, or civilian legal scholarship — rather than in modern case law or statutes, where it has been entirely displaced by terms such as "master," "shipmaster," or "captain."
The term is a marker of the civil law lineage in maritime doctrine. When it appears in a source, it signals engagement with the Roman or continental tradition of maritime law rather than the English common law admiralty stream. This distinction can be meaningful when tracing the intellectual genealogy of doctrines governing a master's liability, authority over crew, or responsibility for cargo.
Because the term is rare even in historical legal dictionaries, its absence from most secondary sources should not be taken as evidence that the underlying concept was absent from a given jurisdiction. The role and legal duties of the ship's master are extensively treated across both civil law and common law traditions under different terminology.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) is the sole historical dictionary source to record this term, defining it as "the master or commander of a ship; the captain of a man-of-war." The brevity of the entry reflects the term's status as a borrowed civilian term of art rather than a working term of Anglo-American practice. Black's does not expand on the legal duties or liabilities associated with the role, treating the entry as a vocabulary gloss rather than a substantive legal concept.
No additional treatment appears in the standard historical dictionaries of English legal terminology, consistent with the term's non-adoption into common law practice. Researchers seeking the substantive legal content — duties of care, authority over crew, liability for cargo — will find it under "master of a ship" or "shipmaster" in both common law and civil law sources.