WATERS, TERRITORIAL.) Customary rules of seamanship applicable to navigation on the high seas were gradually developed. In England the Trinity Mas ters advised the judges as to the rules by which those in charge of a ship should be guided. In 1846 some Trinity House rules of navigation were made statutory. In 1889 an international mari time conference took place at Washington, the ultimate outcome of which was the drawing up of the international regulations for preventing collisions at sea. These have been adopted by all maritime nations, and are thus of universal application. They are operative in respect of British ships everywhere and in respect of foreign ships when within British jurisdiction in the following way. The British Merchant Shipping acts empower the King, by Order in Council, to make regulations of this kind. This was done in 1896. Several further orders were made, and in 1910 the regu lations were consolidated and reissued in the form in which they are now in force.
The colliSion regulations apply in general everywhere but they are subject in certain harbours and inland waters to qualifications introduced by local rules to adapt them to special local circum stances. These were made either in the same way as other national
laws or by local authorities under powers given to them by the national legislature having jurisdiction over the place in question. Thus local rules are in force in many British and Irish ports and waterways, in the Danube and port of Sulina, in the Scheldt, at Gibraltar, in the Suez Canal, in United States inland waters and in the Great Lakes, both United States and Canadian.