State legislation over
those small navigable creeks into which the tide flows," the State of
Delaware was entitled to incorporate a company vested with the right to
erect a dam across such a creek. From these two cases the Court in
Cooley _v._ the Board of Wardens,[841] decided in 1851, extracted the
rule that in the absence of conflicting legislation by Congress States
were entitled to enact legislation adapted to the local needs of
interstate and foreign commerce, that a pilotage law was of this
description, and was, accordingly, constitutionally applicable until
Congress acted to the contrary to vessels engaged in the coasting trade.
In the main, these three holdings have controlled the decision of cases
under the above and the following caption, there being generally no
applicable act of Congress involved. But the power which the rule
attributed to the States, they must use "reasonably," something they
have not always done in the judgment of the Court.

Thus an Alabama statute which required that owners of vessels using the
public waters of the enacting State be enrolled, pay fees, file
statements as to ownership, etc., was held to be inapplicable to vessels
licensed under the act of Congress to engage in the coasting trade;[842]
as was also a Louisiana statute ordering masters and wardens of the port
of Orleans to survey the hatches of all vessels arriving there and to
enact a fee for so doing.[843] "The unreason and the oppressive
character of the act" was held to take it out of the class of local
legislation protected by the rule of the Cooley case.[844] Likewise,
while control by a State of navigable waters wholly within its borders
has been often asserted to be complete in the absence of regulation by
Congress,[845] Congress may assume control at any time;[846] and when
such waters connect with other similar waters "so as to form a waterway
to other States or foreign nations, [they] cannot be obstructed or
impeded so as to impair, defeat, or place any burden upon a right to
their navigation granted by Congress."[847]

On the other hand, in Kelly _v._ Washington,[848] decided in 1937, the
Court sustained the State in applying to motor-driven tugs operating in
navigable waters of the United States legislation which provided for the
inspection and regulation of every vessel operated by machinery if the
same was not subject to inspection under the laws of the United States.
It was conceded that there was "elabora