18 USC § 2279 - Boarding vessels before arrival | Title 18 - Crimes and Criminal Procedure | U.S. Code

USCPrelim is a preliminary release and may be subject to further revision before it is released again as a final version.

Current through Pub. L. 113-99. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

Whoever, not being in the United States service, and not being duly authorized by law for the purpose, goes on board any vessel about to arrive at the place of her destination, before her actual arrival, and before she has been completely moored, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

The master of such vessel may take any such person into custody, and deliver him up forthwith to any law enforcement officer, to be by him taken before any committing magistrate, to be dealt with according to law.

prev | next

Whoever, not being in the United States service, and not being duly authorized by law for the purpose, goes on board any vessel about to arrive at the place of her destination, before her actual arrival, and before she has been completely moored, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

The master of such vessel may take any such person into custody, and deliver him up forthwith to any law enforcement officer, to be by him taken before any committing magistrate, to be dealt with according to law.

Source

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 805; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(D),Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2146.)

Historical and Revision Notes

Based on section 708 of title 46, U.S.C., 1940 ed., Shipping (R.S. § 4606).

“Law enforcement officer” was substituted for “constable or police officer” and “committing magistrate” for “justice of the peace.” The phraseology used in the statute was archaic. It originated when the government had few law enforcement officers and magistrates of its own.

References to specific sections were made to read: “according to law” to achieve brevity.

Mandatory punishment provision was rephrased in the alternative.

The words “without permission of the master” were deleted to remove an inconsistency with the provisions of section 163 of title 46, U.S.C., 1940 ed., and customs regulations. Customs regulations, 1943, section 4.1c, prohibit any person “with or without consent of the master” from boarding vessel, with specific enumerated exceptions. Said section 163 prescribes a “penalty of not more than $100 or imprisonment not to exceed six months, or both” for violating regulations. The revised section increases the fine from $100 to $200 for boarding the vessel “with the consent of the master.”

Minor changes were made in phraseology.

Amendments

1994—Pub. L. 103–322substituted “fined under this title” for “fined not more than $200” in first par.

The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for this section. Updates to a broader range of sections may be found at the update page for containing chapter, title, etc.

The most recent Classification Table update that we have noticed was Tuesday, May 21, 2013

An empty table indicates that we see no relevant changes listed in the classification tables. If you suspect that our system may be missing something, please double-check with the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.

How To Use

Multiple entries for a section are listed most recent first, within the section.

The Session Year indicates which session of Congress was responsible for the changes classified. The Congress number forms the first part of the Public Law number; each Congress has two sessions.

Abbreviations used in the Description of Change column:

An empty field implies a standard amendment.
"new" means a new section or new note, or all new text of an existing section or note.
"nt" means note.
"nt [tbl]" means note [table].
"prec" means preceding.
"fr" means a transfer from another section.
"to" means a transfer to another section.
"omitted" means the section is omitted.
"repealed" means the section is repealed.
"nt ed change" and "ed change" - See the Editorial Classification Change Table [pdf].

The Public Law field is linked to the development of the law in the Thomas system at the Library of Congress.

The Statutes at Large field is linked to the text of the law, in the context of its volume of the Statutes at Large, at the Government Printing Office. Please note that it takes a while for these pages to get posted, so for very recent legislation, you need to look at the "enrolled" version at the Thomas site.

The Statutes at Large references have been rendered in the format used as page numbers in the Public Law web pages to which we link, to facilitate copy-paste into browser "find on this (web) page" tools. We are still working on a more direct link facility.

For serious comparison work, we suggest copying all or a portion of the Public Law text into your favorite text editor, for convenient content traversal and window control.

Sections with change type "new" are a special case, still under development. All are now listed, at the title level only.

You will find that occassionally a specific update you notice in a Public Law listed in a classification table will already have made it into the Code. We assume this is an artifact of the LRC edit process. The LII does not edit the LRC content.

top

General Reference

Refer to the LRC (Law Revision Council) for explanations about the US Code from the folks who put it all together.

You can look for information about what it is and is not, which titles are positive law, the schedule of Supplements, etc. Under download you can find the source data we use here (GPO locator files), as well as, PDF files that look just like the paper books (these may be rather large).

Refer to the Thomas site for changes that have not yet made it into the classification tables.

18 USC	Description of Change	Session Year	Public Law	Statutes at Large

18 USC § 2279 - Boarding vessels before arrival

U.S. Code Toolbox

Law about... Articles from Wex

Get Involved

Find a Lawyer