Cabotage ( French cabotage ) - a term used to mean "sailing a commercial cargo or passenger ship between the seaports of the same state ." The name of the term comes from the Spanish word cabo , which means "cape" [1] .
Initially, the term "cabotage" meant swimming "from cape to cape" without access to the open sea [2] [3] . This should be considered the original interpretation of the term. Almost all the time ships of ancient seafarers were in coastal navigation - first the Egyptians, then the Greeks and Romans, and later the Vikings.
Since at present in almost all countries cabotage is the exclusive right of the merchant fleet of these countries, “seafaring” cabotage has become equal to “legal”. That is, often using the term “coastal swimming” they mean “swimming without going beyond the borders of the country”.
There are large cabotage (transportation of goods and passengers between ports of different seas ) and small cabotage (transportation of goods and passengers between ports of the same sea).
In the former USSR, in relation to cabotage, they were considered as one sea:
- Black and Azov Seas
- White Sea and the Arctic Ocean
- Japan , Okhotsk and Bering Seas
As a rule, cabotage is carried out by the coastal fleet - vessels intended for sailing in a limited area, usually at a small distance from the coast and port of refuge.
Greece has the largest coastal fleet in the world.