There is a court of admiralty in the Isle of Man of which the water-bailiff is judge. He is also styled admiral. It is said to have jurisdiction in salvage and over other maritime matters occurring within 3 leagues from the shore.The Isle of Man.
Modern statutes have given admiralty jurisdiction to the City of London Court, the Court of Passage and to the county courts in the following matters: Salvage, where the value of the salved property does not exceed £1000, or the claim for reward £300; towage, necessaries and wages, County Local Courts.where the claim does not exceed £150; claims for damage to cargo, or by collision, up to £300 (and for sums above these prescribed limits by agreement between the parties); and claims arising out of breaches of charter parties and other contracts for carriage of goods in foreign ships, or torts in respect thereof, up to £300. This jurisdiction is restricted to subjects over which jurisdiction was possessed by the High Court of Admiralty at the time when the first of these acts was passed, except as regards the last branch of it (the “Aline,” 1880, 5 Ex. Div. 227; R. v. Judge of City of London Court, 1892, 1 Q.B. 272). In analogy with the county court admiralty jurisdiction created in England, a limited admiralty jurisdiction has been given in Ireland to the recorders of certain boroughs and the chairmen of certain quarter sessions; and in salvage cases, where a county court in England would have jurisdiction, magistrates, recorders and chairmen of quarter sessions may have jurisdiction as official arbitrators (Merchant Shipping Act 1894, § 547). In Scotland, admiralty suits in cases not exceeding the value of £25 are exclusively tried in the sheriff’s court; while over that limit the sheriff’s court and the Court of Session have concurrent jurisdiction. The sheriff has also criminal admiralty jurisdiction, but only as to crimes which he would be competent to try if committed on land (The Court of Session Act 1830, §§ 21 and 22).
By an act of 1821 an arbitral jurisdiction in cases of salvage was given to certain commissioners of the Cinque Ports.
The appeal from county courts and commissioners is to the High Court of Justice, and is exercised by a divisional court of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division. In cases arising within the Cinque Ports there is an optional appeal to the Admiralty Court of the Cinque Ports. The appeal Appeals.from the High Court of Justice is in ordinary admiralty matters, as in others, to the Court of Appeal, and from thence to the House of Lords. But it is specially provided by the Judicature Act 1891, as it was by the Prize Act 1864, that the appeal in prize cases shall be to the sovereign in council.
The unfortunate provisions of the legislature, giving to the jurisdiction of county courts different money limits in admiralty equity and common law cases, make the distinction between cases coming under the admiralty jurisdiction and other civil cases of practical moment in those courts. Arguments full of learning and research have been addressed to the courts, and weighty decisions have been given, upon questions which would never have arisen if the county courts had not a larger money area of jurisdiction in admiralty cases than they have Civil jurisdiction.in other matters (R. v. Judge of City of London Court, 1892, 1 Q.B. 273; the “Zeta,” 1893, App. Cas. 468). But as regards the high courts, whether in England, Scotland or Ireland, it is not now necessary to distinguish their civil admiralty jurisdiction from their ordinary civil jurisdiction, except for the purpose of seeing whether there can or cannot be process in rem. Not that every admiralty action can of right be brought in rem, but that no process in rem lies at the suit of a subject unless it be for a matter of admiralty jurisdiction—one, for instance, that could in England have been tried in the High Court of Admiralty. Now these matters of admiralty jurisdiction with process in rem range themselves under four primary and four supplementary heads. The four primary are damage, salvage, bottomry, wages; and the four supplementary are extensions due to one or other of the statutes of 1840 (Admiralty Court) and 1861 (Admiralty Court Act). They are damage to cargo carried in a ship, necessaries supplied to a ship, mortgage of ship, and master’s claim for wages and disbursements on account of a ship. In all these cases, primary and secondary, the process of which a plaintiff can avail himself for redress, may be either in personam as in other civil suits, or by arrest of the ship, and, in cases of salvage and bottomry, the cargo. Whenever, also, the ship can be arrested, any freight due can also be attached, by arrest of the cargo to the extent only of the freight which it has to pay. For the purpose of ascertaining whether or not process in rem would lie, there have been distinctions as nice, and the line of admiralty jurisdiction has been drawn as carefully, as in the cases of the admiralty jurisdiction of the county courts (the “Theta,” 1894, Prob. 280; the “Gas Float Whitton,” 1897, App. Cas. 337). There have been similar questions raised in the United States, from De Lovio v. Boit (1815, 2 Gallison, 398), and Ramsay v. Allegre (1827, 12 Wheaton, 611), down to the quite modern cases which will be found quoted in the arguments and judgments in the “Gas Float Whitton.”
The disciplinary jurisdiction at one time exercised by the Admiralty Court, over both the royal navy and merchant vessels, may be said to be obsolete in time of peace, the last remnant of it being suits against merchantmen for flying flags appropriate to men-of-war (the “Minerva,” Disciplinary.1800, 3 C. Rob. 34), a matter now more effectively provided against by the Merchant Shipping Act 1894. In time of war, however, it was exercised in some instances as long as the Admiralty Court lasted, and is now in consequence exercisable by the High Court of Justice (see Prize below). It was, perhaps, in consequence of its ancient disciplinary jurisdiction that the Admiralty Court was made the court to enforce certain portions of the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870.
Finally, appeals from decisions of courts of inquiry, under the Merchant Shipping Act, cancelling or suspending the certificates of officers in the merchant service, may be made to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice.
The admiralty jurisdiction in criminal matters extends over all crimes committed on board British ships at sea or in tidal waters, even though such tidal waters be well within foreign territory (R. v. Anderson, 1868, L.R. 1 C.C.R. 161), but not over crimes committed on board foreign Criminal cases.vessels upon the high seas (R. v. Serva, 1845, 1 Denison C.C. 104). Whether it extended over crimes committed on foreign ships within territorial waters of the United Kingdom, and whether a zone of three miles round the shores of the United Kingdom was for such purpose territorial water, were the great questions raised in R. v. Keyn (the “Franconia,” L.R. 2 Ex. Div. 126), and decided in the negative by the majority of the judges, rightly, as the writer of this article respectfully thinks. Since then, however, the legislature has brought these waters within the jurisdiction of the admiralty by the Territorial Waters Jurisdiction Act 1878. Section 2 runs as follows: “An offence committed by a person, whether he is or is not a British subject, on the open sea within the territorial waters of British dominions, is an offence within the jurisdiction of the admiral, although it may have been committed on board or by means of a foreign ship, and the person who committed such offence may be arrested, tried and punished accordingly.” By § 7 the “jurisdiction of the admiral” is defined as “including the jurisdiction of the admiralty of England or Ireland, or either of such jurisdictions as used in any act of parliament; and for the purpose of arresting any person charged with an offence declared by this act to be within the jurisdiction of the admiral, the territorial waters adjacent to the United Kingdom, or any other part of her majesty’s dominions, shall be deemed to be within the jurisdiction of any judge, magistrate or officer.” And “territorial waters of her majesty’s dominions” are defined as “in reference to the sea, meaning such part of the sea adjacent to the coast of the United Kingdom, or the coast of some other part of her majesty’s dominions, as is deemed by international law to be within the territorial sovereignty of her majesty; and for the purpose of any offence declared by this act to be within the jurisdiction of the admiral, any part of the open sea within one marine league of the coast, measured from low-water mark, shall be deemed to be open sea within the territorial waters of
