Ferry - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition ferry

Definition :

Ferry, the right to carry persons and their goods in boats across a river, and to take toll for such carriage. It is a franchise, and can only be created by a grant from the Crown, prescription which presumes such a grant, or Act of Parliament; see Simpson v. Att.-Gen., 1904 AC 490. The owner if he lose his traffic by the competition of a railway bridge can get no compensation under the Lands Clauses Act, Hopkins v. Great Northern Railway Co., (1877) 2 QBD 224. See also Cowes Urban District Council v. Southampton, etc., Co., (1905) 2 KB 287; Hammerton v. Dysart (Earl), 1916 AC 57; General Estates Co. v. Beaver, (1914) 3 KB 918. As to the duties of common ferrymen, see 1 Shower, 140. As to the acquisition of ferries by local authorities, see the (English) Ferries (Acquisition by Local Authorities) Act, 1919.

It includes a bridge of boats, pontoons or rafts, a swing bridge, a fly-bridge and a temporary bridge and the approaches to, and landing places of, a ferry. [Railways Act, 1989 (24 of 1989), s. 2 (15)]

Means, 'the right to keep a boat for ferrying passengers to charge tolls for so doing, and to prevent other persons from setting up another ferry so near and in such a state of facts as to diminish the custom is a franchise. It can be created only by grant from the Crown by prescription or by statute'. Dictionary of English Law by Earl Jowitt. In India the right to ferry is in the nature of a monopoly which entitles a ferryman to carry exclusively and to collect tolls for carriage of passengers, animals or goods carried over the line of the ferry, Ranendra Narayan Sinha v. State of West Bengal, AIR 1971 SC 1245 (1247): (1970) 3 SCC 109.

To carry persons or property asu. across water, for a year, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 635.