Contribution to the institutional history of the Maritime Authority

Jorge Silva Paulo

Keywords

maritime authority; port authority; internal security; maritime police; Navy; public policy.

Abstract

This paper concurs to the institutional history of the public policy of Maritime Authority. The study centered on the emblematic administrative official of “harbor captain”, created by law in 1839; and investigated its legal evolution up to the first Constitutional Amendment (1982), which determined that the Maritime Authority would leave the Navy. The paper describes the evolution of the legal powers of the harbor captain in rescue, lighthouses and buoys, harbor pilots, registry offices for maritime personnel and ships, regulation of maritime professions, and the Maritime Police, created in 1919 as the “operational arm” of the harbor captain.