Ownership in the Seventeenth-century Admiralty Court

Abstract

ABSTRACT A sample of 1090 admiralty instance decrees from across the seventeenth century includes 234 that concerned either the ownership or co-owner management of merchant vessels. Some of these rulings issued by the high court of admiralty and found at the National Archives indicate what was usually required to prove title to a ship or shares in it. Some suggest whether London's civilian judges favoured crown subjects who were quarrelling with foreigners over vessels and helped to enlarge England's commercial fleet by both their prize and instance decrees. Roughly two-thirds of the decisions define the duties and powers of shareholders in managing a ship. What were their obligations to maintain it or to recover it if it were captured? Could they dismiss the ship's master for incompetence or misconduct if he were a fellow owner? Which investors could choose the ship's voyages? The cases reveal costs to litigants in time and fees. And finally they indicate that common law prohibitions ended admiralty governance of most ownership matters late in the century, lending weight to suggestions by M.J. Prichard and D.E.C. Yale about the decline of the instance jurisdiction and the civilians’ reaction to their loss of authority.