delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question in this case is whether one must aid in the navigation of a vessel in order to qualify as a “seaman” under the Jones Act, 46 U. S. C. App. §688.
I — I
Jon Wilander worked for McDermott International, Inc., as a paint foreman. His duties consisted primarily of supervising the sandblasting and painting of various fixtures and piping located on oil drilling platforms in the Persian Gulf. On July 4, 1983, Wilander was inspecting a pipe on one such platform when a bolt serving as a plug in the pipe blew out under pressure, striking Wilander in the head. At the time, Wilander was assigned to the American-flag vessel MW Gates Tide, a “paint boat” chartered .to McDermott that contained equipment used in sandblasting and painting the platforms.
Wilander sued McDermott in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, seeking recovery under the Jones Act for McDermott’s negligence related to the accident. McDermott moved for summary judgment, alleging that, as a matter of law, Wilander was not a “seaman” under the Jones Act, and therefore not entitled to recovery. The District Court denied the motion. App. 19. In a bifurcated trial, the jury first determined Wilander’s status as a seaman. By special interrogatory, the jury found that Wilander was either permanently assigned to, or performed a substantial amount of work aboard, the
Gates Tide,
and that the performance of his duties contributed to the
*340
function of the
Gates Tide
or to the accomplishment of its mission, thereby satisfying the test for seaman status established in
Offshore Co.
v.
Robison,
The case then proceeded to trial on the issues of liability and damages. The jury found that McDermott’s negligence was the primary cause of Wilander’s injuries, but that Wilander had been 25% contributorily negligent. The jury awarded Wilander $337,500. The District Court denied McDermott’s motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, id., at 19-21, and both parties appealed.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the determination of seaman status, finding sufficient evidence to support the jury’s finding under the
Robison
test.
The Fifth Circuit here concluded that Wilander would not meet the requirements of the
Johnson
test, but reaffirmed the rule in
Robison
and held that Wilander was a “seaman” under the Jones Act.
*341 II
A
In 1903, in
The Osceola,
“1. That the vessel and her owners are liable, in case a seaman falls sick, or is wounded, in the service of the ship, to the extent of his maintenance and cure, and to his wages, at least so long as the voyage is continued.
“2. That the vessel and her owner .are, both by English and American law, liable to an indemnity for injuries received by seamen in consequence of the unseaworthiness of the ship ....
“3. That all the members of the crew . . . are, as between themselves, fellow servants, and hence seamen cannot recover for injuries sustained through the negligence of another member of the crew beyond the expense of their maintenance and cure.
“4. That the seaman is not allowed to recover an indemnity for the negligence of the master, or any member of the crew . . . .” Id., at 175.
The Osceola affirmed a seaman’s general maritime right to maintenance and cure, wages, and to recover for unseaworthiness, but excluded seamen from the general maritime negligence remedy.
Congress twice attempted to overrule
The Osceola
and create a negligence action for seamen. The Seamen’s Act of 1915, 38 Stat. 1164, dealt with proposition 3 of
The Osceola,
the fellow servant doctrine. Section 20 of the 1915 Act provided: “That in any suit to recover damages for any injury sustained on board vessel or in its service seamen having command shall not be held to be fellow-servants with those under their authority.” 38 Stat. 1185. The change was in
*342
effective. Petitioner in
Chelentis
v.
Luckenbach S. S. Co.,
Congress tried a different tack in 1920. It passed the Jones Act, which provides a cause of action in negligence for “any seaman” injured “in the course of his employment.” 46 U. S. C. App. § 688. The Act thereby removes the bar to negligence articulated in The Osceola.
The Jones Act does not define “seaman.” Neither does
The Osceola;
it simply uses the term as had other admiralty courts. We assume that the Jones Act uses “seaman” in the same way. For one thing, the Jones Act provides what
The Osceola
precludes. “The only purpose of the Jones Act was to remove the bar created by The Osceola, so that seamen would have the same rights to recover for negligence as other tort victims.” G. Gilmore & C. Black, Law of Admiralty 328-329 (2d ed. 1975). See also
Warner
v.
Goltra,
*343 B
Since the first Judiciary Act, federal courts have determined who is eligible for various seamen’s benefits under general maritime law. Prior to the Jones Act, these benefits included the tort remedies outlined in
The Osceola
and a lien against the ship for wages. See generally Gilmore & Black,
supra,
at 35-36, 281;
The John G. Stevens,
Notwithstanding the aid in navigation doctrine, federal courts throughout the last century consistently awarded seamen’s benefits to those whose work on board ship did not direct the vessel. Firemen, engineers, carpenters, and cooks all were considered seamen. See,
e. g., Wilson
v.
The Ohio,
Some courts attempted to classify these seamen under a broad conception of aid in navigation that included those who aided in navigation indirectly by supporting those responsible for moving the vessel: “[T]he services rendered must be necessary, or, at least, contribute to the preservation of the vessel, or of those whose labour and skill are employed to navi
*344
gate her.”
Trainer
v.
The Superior,
By the middle of the 19th century, the leading admiralty treatise noted the wide variety of those eligible for seamen’s benefits: “Masters, mates, sailors, surveyors, carpenters, coopers, stewards, cooks, cabin boys, kitchen boys, engineers, pilots, firemen, deck hands, waiters, —women as well as men, — are mariners.” E. Benedict, American Admiralty §278, p. 158 (1850). Benedict concluded that American admiralty courts did not require that seamen have a connection to navigation. “The term mariner includes all persons employed on board ships and vessels during the voyage to assist in their' navigation and preservation, or to promote the purposes of the voyage.” Ibid, (emphasis added). Moreover, Benedict explained, this was the better rule; admiralty courts throughout the world had long recognized that seamen’s benefits were properly extended to all those who worked on board vessels in furtherance of the myriad purposes for which ships set to sea:
“It is universally conceded that the general principles of law must be applied to new kinds of property, as they spring into existence in the progress of society, according to their nature and incidents, and the common sense of the community. In the early periods of maritime *345 commerce, when the oar was the great agent of propulsion, vessels were entirely unlike those of modern times — and each nation and period has had its peculiar agents of commerce and navigation adapted to its own wants and its own waters, and the names and descriptions of ships and vessels are without number. Under the class of mariners in the armed ship are embraced the officers and privates of a little army. In the whale ship, the sealing vessel — the codfishing and herring fishing vessel — the lumber vessel — the freighting vessel — the passenger vessel — there are other functions besides these of mere navigation, and they are performed by men who know nothing of seamanship — and in the great invention of modern times, the steamboat, an entirely new set of operatives, are employed, yet at all times and in all countries, all the persons who have been necessarily or properly employed in a vessel as co-labourers to the great purpose of the voyage, have, by the law, been clothed with the legal rights of mariners — no matter what might be their sex, character, station or profession.” Id., §241, pp. 133-134.
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, federal courts abandoned the navigation test altogether, including in the class of seamen those who worked on board and maintained allegiance to the ship, but who performed more specialized functions having no relation to navigation. The crucial element in these cases was something akin to Benedict’s “great purpose of the voyage.” Thus, in holding that a fisherman, a chambermaid, and a waiter were all entitled to seamen’s benefits, then-judge Brown, later the author of
The Osceola,
eschewed reference to navigation: “[A]ll hands employed upon a vessel, except the master, are entitled to a [seaman’s lien for wages] if their services are in furtherance of the main object of the enterprise in which she is engaged.”
The Minna,
We believe it settled at the time of The Osceola and the passage of the Jones Act that general maritime law did not require that a seaman aid in navigation. It was only necessary that a person be employed on board a vessel in furtherance of its purpose. We conclude therefore that, at the time of its passage, the Jones Act established no requirement that a seaman aid in navigation. Our voyage is not over, however.
C
As had the lower federal courts before the Jones Act, this Court continued to construe “seaman” broadly after the Jones Act. In
International Stevedoring Co.
v.
Haverty,
Congress would, and did, however. Within six months of the decision in
Haverty,
Congress passed the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA), 44 Stat. (part 2) 1424, as amended, 33 U. S. C. §§901-950. The Act provides recovery for injury to a broad range of land-based maritime workers, but explicitly excludes from its coverage “a master or member of a crew of any vessel.” 33 U. S. C. § 902(3)(G). This Court recognized the distinction, albeit belatedly, in
Sivanson
v.
Marra Brothers, Inc.,
With the passage of the LHWCA, Congress established a clear distinction between land-based and sea-based maritime workers. The latter, who owe their allegiance to a vessel and not solely to a land-based employer, are seamen. Ironically, on the same day that the Court decided
Swanson
it
*348
handed down
Seas Shipping Co.
v.
Sieracki,
The LHWCA does not change the rule that a seaman need not aid in navigation. “Member of a crew” and “seaman” are closely related terms. Indeed, the two were often used interchangeably in general maritime cases. See,
e. g., The Osceola,
H h — l > — I
The source of the conflict we resolve today is this Court’s inconsistent use of an aid in navigation requirement. The inconsistency arose during the 19 years that passed between the enactment of the LHWCA in 1927 and the decision in
Swanson
in 1946 — 19 years during which the Court did not recognize the mutual exclusivity of the LHWCA and the Jones Act. Thus,
Jamison
v.
Encamacion,
"Warner
is important for our purposes because it is the Court’s first look at the term “seaman” in the Jones Act as it applies to sea-based employees. The Court adopted a definition of “seaman” consistent with that of the lower federal courts in the later pre-Jones Act cases: “[A] seaman is a mariner of any degree, who lives his life upon the sea. It is enough that what he does affects ‘the operation and welfare of the ship when she is upon a voyage.’
The Buena Ventura,
The confusion began with
South Chicago Coal & Dock Co.
v.
Bassett,
But the Court was
not
defining “seaman” under the Jones Act; it was construing “member of a crew” under the LHWCA.
Bassett
was decided before
Swanson,
at a time when the Court viewed “seaman” as a broader term than “member of a crew.” The
Bassett
Court stated explicitly that it did not equate “member of a crew” under the LHWCA with “seaman” under the Jones Act: “[The LHWCA], as we have seen, was to provide compensation for a class of employees at work on a vessel in navigable waters who, although they might be classed as seamen
(International Stevedoring Co.
v.
Haverty,
[
The Court emphasized this point a year later in a one-sentence summary reversal order in
Cantey
v.
McLain Line, Inc.,
All of this should have made it clear that the aid in navigation test had no necessary connection to the Jones Act. But it did not. In
Norton
v.
Warner Co.,
The Court’s concerns were very different in Norton than they had been in Bassett. Certain maritime unions, appearing as amici curiae, emphasized that the liability of an employer under the LHWCA is exclusive. This means that those covered under the LHWCA because not “members of a crew” are not entitled to the superior remedies available to seamen under the Jones Act and general maritime law. See Norton, supra, at 570-571. Cognizant of its obligation not to narrow unduly the class for whom Congress provided recovery under the Jones Act, the Court explained that the Bas-sett aid in navigation test was not to be read restrictively:
“We said in the Bassett case that the term ‘crew’ embraced those ‘who are naturally and primarily on board’ the vessel ‘to aid in her navigation.’ Id., p. 260. But navigation is not limited to ‘putting over the helm.’ It also embraces duties essential for other purposes of the vessel. Certainly members of the crew are not confined to those who can ‘hand, reef and steer.’ Judge Hough pointed out in The Buena Ventura,243 F. 797 , 799, that *352 ‘every one is entitled to the privilege of a seaman who, like seamen, at all times contributes to the labors about the operation and welfare of the ship when she is upon a voyage.’ And see The Minna,11 F. 759 ; Disbrow v. Walsh Bros.,36 F. 607 , 608 (bargeman). We think that ‘crew’ must have at least as broad a meaning under the Act.” Norton, supra, at 571-572.
The Court here expressed a view very close to the Swanson holding that “member of a crew” under the LHWCA is the same as “seaman” under the Jones Act. Norton adopted a conception of “member of a crew” consistent with the established view of “seaman” in pre-Jones Act cases, and consistent with the definition of “seaman” the Court announced in Warner. It is a conception far broader than that announced in Bassett, despite Norton’s ostensible interpretation of that case.
With Norton, we again reversed course, steering back toward the Warner and the pre-Jones Act definition of “seaman.” Unfortunately, the opinion carried with it the outmoded aid in navigation language. Of course, Norton was a pre-Swanson, pure LHWCA case.
Our Jones Act cases of the late 1950’s were not. In a series of brief decisions, the Court afforded seaman status to claimants working on board vessels whose jobs had not even an indirect connection to the movement of the vessel. Despite their results, these cases either assert an aid in navigation requirement or rely on
Bassett.
See
Gianfala
v.
Texas Co.,
Following
Butler,
we accepted no more of these cases, relegating to the lower courts the task of making some sense of the confusion left in our wake. Our wayward case law has led the lower courts to a “myriad of standards and lack of uniformity in administering the elements of seaman status.” Engerrand
&
Bale, 24 S. Tex. L. J., at 494. The Seventh Circuit expressed its frustration well: “Diderot may very well have had the previous Supreme Court cases in mind when he wrote, We have made a labyrinth and got lost in it. We must find our way out.’”
Johnson,
> I — I
We think the time has come to jettison the aid in navigation language. That language, which had long been rejected by admiralty courts under general maritime law, and by this Court in Warner, a Jones Act case, slipped back in through an interpretation of the LHWCA at a time when the LHWCA had nothing to do with the Jones Act.
We now recognize that the LHWCA is one of a pair of mutually exclusive remedial statutes that distinguish between land-based and sea-based maritime employees. The LHWCA restricted the definition of “seaman” in the Jones Act only to the extent that “seaman” had been taken to in- *354 elude land-based employees. There is no indication in the Jones Act, the LHWCA, or elsewhere, that Congress has excluded from Jones Act remedies those traditional seamen who owe allegiance to a vessel at sea, but who do not aid in navigation.
In his dissent in
Sieracki,
Chief Justice Stone chastised the Court for failing to recognize the distinct nature of land-based and sea-based employment. Traditional seamen’s remedies, he explained, have been “universally recognized as . . . growing out of the status of the seaman and his peculiar relationship to the vessel, and as a feature of the maritime law compensating or offsetting the special hazards and disadvantages to which they who go down to sea in ships are subjected.”
We believe the better rule is to define “master or member of a crew” under the LHWCA, and therefore “seaman” under the Jones Act, solely in terms of the employee’s connection to a vessel in navigation. This rule best explains our case law and is consistent with the pre-Jones Act interpretation of “seaman” and Congress’ land-based/sea-based distinction. All who work at sea in the service of a ship face those particular perils to which the protection of maritime law, statutory as well as decisional, is directed. See generally Robertson, A New Approach to Determining Seaman Status, 64 Texas L. Rev. 79 (1985). It is not the employee’s particular job that is determinative, but the employee’s connection to a vessel.
Shortly after
Butler,
our last decision in this area, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit attempted to decipher this Court’s seaman status cases. See
Offshore Co.
v.
Robison,
The key to seaman status is employment-related connection to a vessel in navigation. We are not called upon here to define this connection in all details, but we hold that a necessary element of the connection is that a seaman perform the work of a vessel. See
Maryland Casualty Co.
v.
Lawson,
V
Jon Wilander was injured while assigned to the Gates Tide as a paint foreman. He did not aid in the navigation or transportation of the vessel. The jury found, however, that Wilander contributed to the more general function or mission of the Gates Tide, and subsequently found that he was a “seaman” under the Jones Act. McDermott argues that the question should not have been given to the jury. The company contends that, as a matter of law, Wilander is not entitled to Jones Act protection because he did not aid in navigation by furthering the transportation of the Gates Tide.
We have said that seaman status under the Jones Act is a question of fact for the jury. * In
Bassett,
an LHWCA case, the Court held that Congress had given to the deputy commissioner, an administrative officer, the authority to determine who is a “member of a crew” under the LHWCA. 309
*356
U. S., at 257-258. If there is evidence to support the deputy commissioner’s finding, it is conclusive.
Ibid.
In
Senko,
we applied the same rule to findings by the jury in Jones Act cases.
It is for the court to define the statutory standard. “Member of a crew” and “seaman” are statutory terms; their interpretation is a question of law. The jury finds the facts and, in these cases, applies the legal standard, but the court must not abdicate its duty to determine if there is a reasonable basis to support the jury’s conclusion. If reasonable persons, applying the proper legal standard, could differ as to whether the employee was a “member of a crew,” it is a question for the jury. See
Anderson
v.
Liberty Lobby, Inc.,
The question presented here is narrow. We are not asked to determine if the jury could reasonably have found that Wilander had a sufficient connection to the Gates Tide to be a *357 “seaman” under the Jones Act. We are not even asked whether the jury reasonably found that Wilander advanced the function or mission of the Gates Tide. We are asked only if Wilander should be precluded from seaman status because he did not perform transportation-related functions on board the Gates Tide. Our answer is no. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.