[2] Ancient title is a similar judicial doctrine based on a different reasoning: during the Age of Discovery and prior to the 18th-century concept of freedom of the high seas, the open sea was considered territoria nullius (nobody's territory) and thus claims for newly discovered parts of it by colonial powers were legitimate.
The goal of protecting "vital" waters is pursued by the states through the modern maritime zones.
[2] The concept of historic water goes against the established modern principles of claiming the internal waters, as originally defined by the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone in 1958: normal baselines, straight baselines, baselines of bays.
[4] The Convention also mentioned (but did not define)[5] the historic bays following the Second Committee of the League of Nations Codification Conference, 1930 that accepted the existence of historic waters while underscoring the lack of their definition.
[6] The intent of adding the term to Convention was to create an exception accommodating the bays that are already recognized as part of the internal waters of sovereign states.