delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question in this case is whether a dredge is a “vessel” under § 2(3)(G) of the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA), 44 Stat., pt. 2, p. 1425, as added by § 2(a) of Pub. L. 98-426, 33 U. S. C. § 902(3)(G). We hold that it is.
I
As part of Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, or “Big Dig,” the Commonwealth of Massachusetts undertook to extend the Massachusetts Turnpike through a tunnel running beneath South Boston and Boston Harbor to Logan Airport. The Commonwealth employed respondent Dutra Construction Company to assist in that undertaking. At the time, Dutra owned the world’s largest dredge, the Super Scoop, which was capable of digging the 50-foot-deep, 100-foot-wide, three-quarter-mile-long trench beneath Boston Harbor that is now the Ted Williams Tunnel.
The Super Scoop is a massive floating platform from which a clamshell bucket is suspended beneath the water. The bucket removes silt from the ocean floor and dumps the sediment onto one of two scows that float alongside the dredge. The Super Scoop has certain characteristics common to seagoing vessels, such as a captain and crew, navigational lights, ballast tanks, and a crew dining area. But it lacks others. Most conspicuously, the Super Scoop has only limited means of self-propulsion. It is moved long distances by tugboat. (To work on the Big Dig, it was towed from its home base in California through the Panama Canal and up the eastern seaboard to Boston Harbor.) It navigates short distances by manipulating its anchors and cables. When dredging the *485 Boston Harbor trench, it typically moved in this way once every couple of hours, covering a distance of 30-to-50 feet each time.
Dutra hired petitioner Willard Stewart, a marine engineer, to maintain the mechanical systems on the Super Scoop during its dredging of the harbor. At the time of Stewart’s accident, the Super Scoop lay idle because one of its scows, Scow No. 4, had suffered an engine malfunction and the other was at sea. Stewart was on board Scow No. 4, feeding wires through an open hatch located about 10 feet above the engine area. While Stewart was perched beside the hatch, the Super Scoop used its bucket to move the scow. In the process, the scow collided with the Super Scoop, causing a jolt that plunged Stewart headfirst through the hatch to the deck below. He was seriously injured.
Stewart sued Dutra in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts under the Jones Act, 38 Stat. 1185, as amended, 41 Stat. 1007 and 96 Stat. 1955, 46 U. S. C. App. § 688(a), alleging that he was a seaman injured by Dutra’s negligence. He also filed an alternative claim under § 5(b) of the LHWCA, 33 U. S. C. § 905(b), which authorizes covered employees to sue a “vessel” owner as a third party for an injury caused by the owner’s negligence.
Dutra moved for summary judgment on the Jones Act claim, arguing that Stewart was not a seaman. The company acknowledged that Stewart was “a member of the
[Super
Scoop’s] crew,”
On interlocutory appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed, concluding that it too was bound by
DiGiovanni.
On remand, the District Court granted summary judgment in favor of Dutra on Stewart’s alternative claim that Dutra was liable for negligence as an owner of a “vessel” under the LHWCA, 33 U. S. C. § 905(b). The Court of Appeals again affirmed. It noted that Dutra had conceded that the
Super Scoop
was a “vessel” for purposes of § 905(b), explaining that “the LHWCA’s definition of ‘vessel’ is ‘significantly more inclusive than that used for evaluating seaman status under the Jones Act.’ ”
We granted certiorari to resolve confusion over how to determine whether a watercraft is a “vessel” for purposes of the LHWCA.
*487 II
Prior to the passage of the Jones Act, general maritime law usually entitled a seaman who fell sick or was injured both to maintenance and cure (or the right to be cared for and paid wages during the voyage, see,
e. g., Harden
v.
Gordon,
Congress enacted the Jones Act in 1920 to remove this bar to negligence suits by seamen. See
Chandris, Inc.
v.
Latsis,
“Any seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment may, at his election, maintain an action for damages at law, with the right of trial by jury, and in such action all statutes of the United States modifying or extending the common-law right or remedy in cases of personal injury to railway employees shall apply.” 46 U. S. C. App. § 688(a).
Although the statute is silent on who is a “seaman,” both the maritime law backdrop against which Congress enacted the Jones Act and Congress’ subsequent enactments provide some guidance.
First, “seaman” is a term of art that had an established meaning under general maritime law. We have thus presumed that when the Jones Act made available negligence remedies to “[a]ny seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment,” Congress took the term “seaman” as the general maritime law found it.
Chandris,
*488
supra,
at 355 (citing
Warner
v.
Goltra,
Second, Congress provided further guidance in 1927 when it enacted the LHWCA, which provides scheduled compensation to land-based maritime workers but which also excepts from its coverage “a master or member of a crew of any vessel.” 33 U. S. C. §902(3)(G). This exception is simply “a refinement of the term ‘seaman’ in the Jones Act.”
McDermott Int’l, Inc.
v.
Wilander,
Still, discerning the contours of “seaman” status, even with the general maritime law and the LHWCA’s language as aids to interpretation, .has not been easy. See Chandris, supra, at 356. We began clarifying the definition of “seaman” in a pair of cases, McDermott Int’l, Inc. v. Wilander, supra, and Chandris, supra, that addressed the relationship a worker must have to a vessel in order to be a “master or member” of its crew. We now turn to the other half of the LHWCA’s equation: how to determine whether a watercraft is a “vessel.”
A
Just as Congress did not define the term “seaman” in the Jones Act, 1 it did not define the term “vessel” in the LHWCA *489 itself. 2 However, Congress provided a definition elsewhere. At the time of the LHWCA’s enactment, §§ 1 and 3 of the Revised Statutes of 1873 specified:
“In determining the meaning of the revised statutes, or of any act or resolution of Congress passed subsequent to February twenty-fifth, eighteen hundred and seventy-one, . •. . [t]he word ‘vessel’ includes every description of water-craft or other artificial contrivance used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water.” 3 18 Stat., pt. 1, p. 1.
Sections 1 and 3 show that, because the LHWCA is an Act of Congress passed after February 25, 1871, the LHWCA’s use of the term “vessel” “includes every description of water-craft or other artificial contrivance used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water.” Ibid.
Section 3’s definition, repealed and recodified in 1947 as part of the Rules of Construction Act, 1 U. S. C. § 3, has *490 remained virtually unchanged from 1873 to the present. 4 Even now, §3 continues to supply the default definition of “vessel” throughout the U. S. Code, “unless the context indicates otherwise.” 1 U. S. C. § 1. The context surrounding the LHWCA’s enactment indicates that § 3 defines the term “vessel” for purposes of the LHWCA.
Section 3 merely codified the meaning that the term “vessel” had acquired in general maritime law. See 1 S. Friedell, Benedict on Admiralty § 165 (rev. 7th ed. 2004). In the decades following its enactment, § 3 was regularly used to define the term “vessel” in maritime jurisprudence. Taking only the issue presented here — whether a dredge is a vessel— prior to passage of the Jones Act and the LHWCA, courts often used §3’s definition to conclude that dredges were vessels. 5
From the very beginning, these courts understood the differences between dredges and more traditional seagoing vessels. Though smaller, the dredges at issue in the earliest cases were essentially the same as the Super Scoop here. For instance, the court could have been speaking equally of the Super Scoop as of The Alabama when it declared:
“The dredge and scows have no means of propulsion of their own except that the dredge, by the use of anchors, windlass, and rope, is moved for short distances, as required in carrying on the business of dredging. Both *491 the dredge and the scows are moved from place to place where they may be employed by being towed, and some of the tows have been for long distances and upon the high seas. The dredge and scows are not made for or adapted to the carriage of freight or passengers, and the evidence does not show that, in point of fact, this dredge and scows had ever been so used and employed.” The Alabama,19 F. 544 , 545 (SD Ala. 1884).
See also
Huismann
v.
The Pioneer,
This Court also treated dredges as vessels prior to the passage of the Jones Act and the LHWCA. It did so in a pair of cases, first implicitly in
The “Virginia
Ehrman”
and the “Agnese,”
These early cases show that at the time Congress enacted the Jones Act and the LHWCA in the 1920’s, it was settled that § 3 defined the term “vessel” for purposes of those statutes. It was also settled that a structure’s status as a vessel under § 3 depended on whether the structure was a means of maritime transportation. See R. Hughes, Handbook of
*492
Admiralty Law §5, p. 14 (2d ed. 1920). For then, as now, dredges served a waterborne transportation function, since in performing their work they carried machinery, equipment, and crew over water. See,
e. g., Butler
v.
Ellis,
This Court’s cases have continued to treat §3 as defining the term “vessel” in the LHWCA, and they have continued to construe § 3’s definition in light of the term’s established meaning in general maritime law. For instance, in
Norton
v.
Warner Co.,
*493 B
Despite this Court’s reliance on § 3 in cases like
Ellis
and
Norton,
Dutra argues that the Court has implicitly narrowed § 3’s definition. Section 3 says that a “vessel” must be “used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water.” 18 Stat., pt. 1, p. 1. In a pair of cases, the Court held that a drydock,
Cope
v.
Vallette Dry Dock Co.,
Dutra misreads
Cope
and
Evansville.
In
Cope,
the plaintiff sought a salvage award for having prevented a drydock from sinking after a steamship collided with it.
Cope
and
Evansville
did no more than construe § 3 in light of the distinction drawn by the general maritime law between watercraft temporarily stationed in a particular location and those permanently affixed to shore or resting on the
*494
ocean floor. See,
e. g., The Alabama,
This distinction is sensible: A ship and its crew do not move in and out of Jones Act coverage depending on whether the ship is at anchor, docked for loading or unloading, or berthed for minor repairs, in the same way that ships taken permanently out of the water as a practical matter do not remain vessels merely because of the remote possibility that they may one day sail again. See
Pavone
v.
Mississippi Riverboat Amusement Corp.,
Applying §3 brings within the purview of the Jones Act the sorts of watercraft considered vessels at the time Congress passed the Act. By including special-purpose vessels like dredges, § 3 sweeps broadly, but the other prerequisites to qualifying for seaman status under the Jones Act provide some limits, notwithstanding §3’s breadth. A maritime worker seeking Jones Act seaman status must also prove that his duties contributed to the vessel’s function or mission,
*495
and that his connection to the vessel was substantial both in nature and duration.
Chandris,
C
The Court of Appeals, relying on its previous en banc decision in
DiGiovanni
v.
Traylor Brothers, Inc.,
Section 3 requires only that a watercraft be “used, or capable of being used, as a means of transportation on water” to qualify as a vessel. It does not require that a watercraft be used
primarily
for that purpose. See
The Alabama, supra,
at 546;
The International,
Also, a watercraft need not be in motion to qualify as a vessel under §3. Looking to whether a watercraft is mo-, tionless or moving is the sort of “snapshot” test that we rejected in
Chandris.
Just as a worker does not “oscillate back and forth between Jones Act coverage and other remedies depending on the activity in which the worker was engaged while injured,”
Chandris,
Granted, the Court has sometimes spoken of the requirement that a vessel be “in navigation,”
id.,
at 373-374, but never to indicate that a structure’s locomotion at any given moment mattered. Rather, the point was that structures may lose their character as vessels if they have been withdrawn from the water for extended periods of time.
Ibid.; Roper
v.
United States,
Instead, the “in navigation” requirement is an element of the vessel status of a watercraft. It is relevant to whether the craft is “used, or capable of being used” for maritime transportation. Á ship long lodged in a drydock or shipyard can again be put to sea, no less than one permanently moored to shore or the ocean floor can be cut loose and made to sail. The question remains in all cases whether the watercraft’s use “as a means of transportation on water” is a practical possibility or merely a theoretical one. Supra, at 493. In some cases that inquiry may involve factual issues for the jury, Chandris, supra, at 373, but here no relevant facts were in dispute. Dutra conceded that the Super Scoop was only temporarily stationary while Stewart and others were repairing the scow; the Super Scoop had not been taken out of service, permanently anchored, or otherwise rendered practically incapable of maritime transport.
Finally, although Dutra argues that the
Super Scoop
is not a “vessel” under § 902(3)(G), which is the LHWCA provision that excludes seamen from the Act’s coverage, Dutra con
*497
ceded below that the
Super Scoop is
a “vessel” under § 905(b), which is the LHWCA provision that imposes liability on vessel owners for negligence to longshoremen. The concession was necessary because the Court of Appeals had previously held that §905(b)’s use of the term “vessel” is “ ‘significantly more inclusive than that used for evaluating seaman status under the Jones Act.’ ”
Ill
At the time that Congress enacted the LHWCA and since, Rev. Stat. §3, now 1 U. S. C. §3, has defined the term “vessel” in the LHWCA. Under § 3, a “vessel” is any watercraft practically capable of maritime transportation, regardless of its primary purpose or state of transit at a particular moment. Because the Super Scoop was engaged in maritime transportation at the time of Stewart’s injury, it was a vessel within the meaning of 1 U. S. C. § 3. Despite the seeming incongruity of grouping dredges alongside more traditional seafaring vessels under the maritime statutes, Congress and the courts have long done precisely that:
“[I]t seems a stretch of the imagination to class the deck hands of a mud dredge in the quiet waters of a Potomac creek with the bold and skillful mariners who breast the angry waves of the Atlantic; but such and so far-reaching are the principles which underlie the jurisdiction of the courts of admiralty that they adapt themselves to all the new kinds of property and new sets of operatives and new conditions which are brought into existence in the progress of the world.” Saylor v. Taylor,77 F. 476 , 479 (CA4 1896).
*498 The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Notes
The Shipping Act, 1916, defines the term “vessel” for purposes of the Jones Act. See 46 U. S. C. App. §801. However, the provision of the Jones Act at issue here, § 688(a), speaks not of “vessels,” but of “seamen.” In any event, because we have identified a Jones Act “seaman” with reference to the LHWCA’s exclusion, see 38 U. S. C. § 902(3)(G) (“a master or member of a crew of any vessel”), it is the LHWCA’s use of the term “vessel” that matters. And, as we explain, the context surrounding Con *489 gress’ enactment of the LHWCA suggests that Rev. Stat. §3, now 1 U. S. C. §3, provides the controlling definition of the term “vessel” in the LHWCA.
As part of its 1972 Amendments to the LHWCA, Congress amended the Act with what appeal’s at first blush to be a definition of the term “vessel”: “Unless the context requires otherwise, the term ‘vessel’ means any vessel upon which or in connection with which any person entitled to benefits under this chapter suffers injury or death arising out of or in the course of his employment, and said vessel’s owner, owner pro hac vice, agent, operator, charter or bare boat charterer, master, officer, or crew member.” 33 U. S. C. §902(21). However, Congress enacted this definition in conjunction with the third-party vessel owner provision of § 905(b). Rather than specifying the characteristics of a vessel, §902(21) instead lists the parties liable for the negligent operation of a vessel. See
McCarthy
v.
The Bark Peking,
Congress had used substantially the same definition before, first in an 1866 antismuggling statute, see § 1, 14 Stat. 178, and then in an 1870 statute “providfing] for the Relief of sick and disabled Seamen,” ch. CLXIX, 16 Stat. 169 (italics deleted); see id., § 7, at 170.
During the 1947 codification, the hyphen was removed from the word “watercraft.” §3, 61 Stat. 633.
See,
e. g., The Alabama,
See,
e. g., Jerome B. Grubart, Inc.
v.
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co.,