High Court of Admiralty

1. Introduction

The High Court of Admiralty emerged as a separate entity probably after the battle of Sluys in 1340. It was established to deal primarily with questions of piracy or spoil (there is a glossary at the end of this leaflet) but later developed a jurisdiction in prize and a civil jurisdiction in such matters as salvage and collision, based on Roman or civil law. Actions could be taken against ships and goods as well as against persons. Soon after the restoration in 1660 the civil business of the court divided, with an instance court and a prize court. The criminal side passed to the Central Criminal Court in 1834, and when the Supreme Court of Judicature was established in 1875 the civil law business of the court joined the other civil law courts in the creation of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice. Until 1733, records of the proceedings in the court, as opposed to evidence gathered, are likely to be in Latin.

2. Pre 1535

An act of 1535/6 (27 Henry VIII) marks a significant change in the workings of the court (see below under Criminal), and documents prior to this date are considered separately here. One of the earliest and best known of these is the Black Book of the Admiralty, or 'Liber Niger Admiralitatis' of around 1450 (HCA 12/1). This was transcribed between 1871 and 1876 by Sir Travers Twiss. The Black Book was thought at the time to be lost, and Twiss worked from related manuscripts and transcripts. Of the four volumes of Twiss's work at The National Archives, only the first and fourth relate to the Black Book. Vol. I pp. 1-344 contains the transcripts, and Vol. IV contains minor corrections made after the original was found. The languages used can be dual text (pages side by side) in Old French and contemporary English, Latin alone, French alone or English alone. Each volume is indexed by person, place and subject. Other records from before 1535 are not numerous, but include:

3. Criminal

The act referred to above (27 Hen VIII c 4, 5), 'An Act concerning Pirates and Robbers of the Sea', and the very similar act of the following year (28 Hen VIII c 15), 'An Act for Punishment of Pirates and Robbers of the Sea', attempted to correct the shortcomings of the civil law in the prosecution of piracy, 'treasons, felonies, robberies, murders and confederacies'. Under civil law, the sentence of death could not be given unless the defendant confessed or there were witnesses, and witnesses were hard to assemble because by the nature of their calling, seamen were nearly always away at sea. The acts provided for such offences to be dealt with 'in such like manner and form as if such offences had been committed upon the land', in other words, under common law. Benefit of clergy was also withdrawn. The most common categories of offence are piracy, treason, murder, mutiny, desertion, sodomy, insurance fraud, rape, robbery (sometimes difficult to distinguish from piracy) and (after 1807) slaving.

The proceedings are to be found in HCA 1. Discovery, our cataloguea search tool with descriptions of tens of millions of documents from the UK central government, law courts, and other national bodies, like the paper list from which it derives, largely lists the documents by type e.g. Proclamations of Sessions, Jury Precepts etc. A relatively modern calendar and index is available in the Map and Large Document Reading Room. A key at the front of the paper series list records which pieces are searchable by name of person, name of ship. This may be summarized as follows:

Those marked with an asterisk represent the most straightforward way of finding a person or ship. The index and calendar to HCA 1/1-101 is available at The National Archives.

4. Prize

The business of the High Court of Admiralty, aside from the criminal cases above, was administered under civil law and divided into prize jurisdiction and instance jurisdiction (for the latter see below). The Prize Court ruled on disputed prize cases and either condemned the ship, cargo or both as lawful prize or found in favour of the owners of the prize as 'not lawful prize'.

Records of prize cases are found in these series:

Of these, HCA 32 is by far the most useful and the easiest to access if you have the name of the ship and an approximate date. There is a comprehensive guide to the series in the introductory note preceding the paper catalogue. The papers relating to each ship are often separated into two folders: Court Papers, being those actually produced at the trial, and Ship's Papers, those impounded at the ship's capture, but not actually used in court. Together, these can often form a vivid snapshot of the lives of the officers and men at the moment of capture. By their nature, the documents are usually in foreign languages, predominantly French, Spanish and Dutch. The following table shows the arrangement of the series HCA 32:

5. Instance

Instance jurisdiction, as opposed to prize jurisdiction (see above), covers commercial disputes, disputes over wages, collisions, pilotage, salvage and droits. Droits of Admiralty are rights or perquisites, such as the proceeds arising from the seizure of enemies' ships, wrecks, flotsam, jetsam etc. Instance records and their means of reference are as follows:

These IND 1 volumes are available at The National Archives.

6. Vice Admiralty

Until 1835 there were local courts of admiralty in the maritime counties, and records relating to these are to be found in ADM 1 and HCA 49. However, the majority of vice-admiralty records relate to courts in colonial possessions, the proceedings of which are to be found in HCA 49. The arrangement is by colony - Cape of Good Hope, Santo Domingo, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Minorca, New York, Sierra Leone and Various -  beneath which the arrangement is usually roughly chronological. Other records relating to vice-admiralty courts are in ADM 1, HCA 1 , HCA 5, HCA 13, HCA 30 , HCA 32, HCA 35 and HCA 50.

By no means were all the records generated by these courts forwarded to the Admiralty in London and so many were never transferred to The National Archives.

7. Slave trade

In 1807 the slave trade was abolished in all British possessions and after that date many examples of the navy's enforcement of this are to be found, especially in HCA 49/97, cases adjudicated in the court of vice-admiralty for Sierra Leone.

In 1821 William Rothery was appointed by the treasury to report on all cases involving slavery in admiralty, vice-admiralty and mixed commission (held jointly with representatives of the other country involved) courts. In 1860 he was succeeded by his son Henry, who remained in the post until 1888, by which time the work was greatly diminished. Their reports are to be found in HCA 35, 1821-1891.

8. Appeals

Appeals in prize cases went to the Commission of Appeals in Prize, also known as the High Court of Appeal for Prizes. (But there are some prize papers in DEL 2). The documents can be found in:

Appeals in instance cases, together with those from ecclesiastical and other civilian courts, went to the Court of Delegates until 1834. The documents can be found in:

From 1834 onwards appeals were heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and are to be found in the PCAP series.

9. General

An index of cases (prize and instance together) for the limited period 1515-1551 relates to and cross-refers:

Falling into several of the categories discussed above is HCA 30, a very large series of Admiralty Miscellanea, which is partially searchable on our catalogue.

Select Pleas in the Court of Admiralty, Reginald Marsden, Selden Society Vol. XI gives selected pleadings in the HCA from 1390-1602. In this volume the file number translates to the piece number in HCA 24.

HCA is a large and complex collection of documents, and this leaflet does not attempt to be comprehensive. Both the finding aids and secondary reading can be found at The National Archives.

10. Select glossary