A Treatise on the Law Relative to Merchant Ships and Seamen

1802 Merchant Ships and Seaman: In Four Parts: I. Of the Owners of Merchant Ships; II. Of the Persons Employed in the Navigation Thereof; III. Of the Carriage of Goods Therein; IV. Of the Wages of Merchant Seamen. Enlarged With an Addenda Relative to Some Laws and Customs of the United States. Philadelphia: Printed by James Humphreys, 1802. xvi, 342, [6] pp. Includes four-page subscriber list and two-page printer advertisement. Octavo (5" x 8-1/4"). Recent period-style quarter calf over cloth, lettering piece, endpapers renewed. Corner lacking from a leaf with no loss to text. Two small ink spots to title page, light foxing and dampstaining throughout. * First American edition, published the same year as the first London edition, to which it is star paged. With a subscriber list that includes Thomas Biddle, Horace Binney, Peter S. DuPonceau and Bird Wilson. Considered "a legal classic of high character" by Marvin, Abbott's treatise was the first devoted exclusively to the law of shipping. James Kent used it in his Commentaries on American Law; Joseph Story, who held it in high regard, added notes to the second American edition. Marvin, Legal Bibliography (1847) 47. Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 1560.