Page 38: of Marine News Magazine (June 2024)

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Book

Review

De? ating Mythology:

New Book Unpacks the History Behind the Jones Act

By Eric Haun he impacts of Section 27 of the Merchant Marine

Act of 1920, today commonly referred to as the

Jones Act, are often debated in maritime circles.

But the well-known U.S. law, which requires ves-

T sels that transport goods between U.S. ports to be Amer- ican-built, -? agged, -owned and -crewed, hasn’t always been a hot button issue, according to Charlie Papavizas, author of a new book on the subject, Journey to the Jones

Act: U.S. Merchant Marine Policy 1776-1920.

A leading maritime attorney, Papavizas has been help- ing his clients navigate the Jones Act for nearly 40 years, and he said his new book arose, in part, to help set the record straight. The law and its origins, he said, are of- ten misunderstood, and somewhere along the line, a false mythology was created. “I wanted to write a proper his- tory of how we got to the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, and to give it its due as a whole, rather than the part that everybody complains about or thinks is the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

Section 27, it turns out, was only a very small piece of what Senator Wesley Livsey Jones was doing when he

Charlie Papavizas introduced the Merchant Marine Act. Before setting out to write the book, Papavizas had an inkling that this was the case, that what is today known as the Jones Act was of lesser importance in 1920. “What I didn’t expect to ? nd,” he said, “was that it was of no importance, not spades is that what happened in 1920 was just part of an lesser importance.” evolution. It was not a culmination point. It was not the “After the act was signed by President Wilson in June beginning of a policy that everybody says it is.” 1920, as often happens after a law gets enacted, there was In Journey to the Jones Act, Papavizas unpacks the his- controversy about certain provisions. [Section 27] wasn’t tory behind what has evolved to take on a life as the Unit- one of them. There was no controversy. There was no ed States’ most newsworthy and controversial maritime discussion,” Papavizas said. “What that showed to me in policy law.

38 | MN June 2024