EMBARGO. A proclamation or order of state, usually issued in time of war or threat ened hostilities, prohibiting the departure of ships or goods from some or all the ports of such state, until further order. The William King, 2 Wheat. (U. S.) 148, 4 L. Ed. 206.
• A civil embargo is the act of a state de taining the ships of its own citizens in port, which amounts to an interdiction of com merce, accompanied, as it usually is, by a closing of its ports to foreign vessels. A hostile embargo is a detention, as before mentioned, of foreign vessels and property which may be in the ports of the wronged state. The detention is by way of reprisal (q. v.) and is thus distinguished from a de tention of foreign vessels upon other grounds. If hostile embargo is followed by war, the vessels detained are confiscated. The term embargo is sometimes applied to the deten tion of foreign merchant vessels after the outbreak of war. It had been customary for belligerents to allow enemy vessels in their ports. at.the outbreak of hostilities to depart freely, and this custom finds a limit ed expression in the Convention Relative to the Status of Enemy Merchant Ships at the Outbreak of Hostilities, adopted at the Hague Convention of 1907, which provides that it is desirable that such vessels be al lowed to depart freely.
The detention of ships by an embargo is such an injury to the owner as to entitle him to recover on a policy of insurance against "arrests or detainments." And whether the embargo be legally or illegally laid, the injury to the owner is the same, and the insurer is equally liable for the loss occasioned by it. Marsh. Ins. b. 1, c. 12, s. 5; 1 Kent 60; 1 Bell, Dict. 517.
An embargo detaining a vessel at the port of departure, or in the course of the voyage, does not of itself work a dissolution of a charter-party, or of the contract with the seamen. It is only a temporary restraint imposed by authority for legitimate politi cal purposes, which suspends for a. time the performance of such contracts, and leaves the rights of parties untouched ; 1 Bell, Dict. 517.