A Thing 'Unknown to Law': the Strange Case of the Admiralty Transport Arbitration Board

Abstract

Arbitrations are of three kinds … An arbitration may originate: 1. in an agreement between the parties, called a submission; 2. in an order of the Court; 3. in me provisions of an Act of Parliament. … an arbitration arising from a source other than these three is unknown to law. IN CHARACTERISTICALLY forthright terms, Quintin Hogg circumscribed the sources of arbitral jurisdiction in the only edition of his The Law of Arbitration .1 However, an alternative source of arbitral authority had briefly been canvassed in the peculiar conditions of the Great War: an arbitration scheme established by Royal Proclamation to regulate the payment of compensation for the exercise of the Crown's prerogative right to requisition ships. This article reviews the brief history of this body, the Admiralty Transport Arbitration Board, its rules and methods of working, and considers the courts' response to its ambiguous legal status. The Board had been conceived as part of a peacetime act of wartime contingency planning. In the many conflicts of the previous century, the Government had chartered the vessels necessary for military operations on the open market.2 However, it was recognised that the conditions of modern warfare demanded a speedier and more comprehensive mobilisation of tonnage. The Transport Department was asked to consider the means by which an Expeditionary Force might be landed on the Continent, and in December 1912 it commissioned a report from Lionel Fletcher, manager of the White Star Line, and Thomas Royden, Deputy Chairman of the Cunard S.S. Co, to advise on the shipping requirements for this purpose.3 In April 1913, after discussions with the War Office and the Admiralty, the report was produced. In February 1914, an Interdepartmental Committee of the Board of Trade and the Committee for Imperial Defence, under the chairmanship of Admiral Slade, was asked …