Abstract
The search for order on the seas has long been a quest of civilized societies. Among the obligations of navies, past and present, and from time immemorial, is police work on behalf of states in checking sea-robbers. These duties might be described as prosaic. But they are nonetheless essential to peace, order, and progress. National laws bearing on the regulation of trade in inshore waters were put in place to give the benefits of trade to the nation, or its constituent parts, as a public right, and in this scheme of things revenue was a corporate right of the nation. All attempts to circumvent state regulation were considered piratical and punishable by severe penalty, including death. Merchant shipping undertaking such lawless action was likewise deemed an enemy of the state. Ships engaged in such illicit action were subject to seizure and surrender, or relinquishment, to crown or other authority. Prize money was paid as an inducement to pursuing the quest against brigands on the sea.
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Notes
- 1.
William Monson, Naval Tracts, published in A. and J. Churchill, Voyages (1704) and excerpted in Patrick O’Brian, A Book of Voyages (London: Home & Van Thal, 1947), 203–14.
- 2.
R.T. Ward, Pirates in History (York Press, 1974); on privateering, Julian Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (new ed.; Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1988), 96.
- 3.
See N.A.M. Rodger, “The Law and Language of Private Naval Warfare,” Mariner’s Mirror, 100, 1 (February 2014): 5–16.
- 4.
See “An Abstract of the Civil Law and Statute Now in Force, in Relation to Piracy,” appendix in Daniel Defoe, A General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonborn (London: J.M. Dent, 1972), 377–79.
- 5.
S.W.C. Pack, Windward of the Caribbean (London: Alvin Redman, 1964), 155–56.
- 6.
British (or any other national jurisdiction) connoted the power of courts to adjudicate. However, control was by the national navy, that is, the administrative and executive power of enforcement. Right of innocent passage through territorial waters gave general immunity from the jurisdiction of court processes of the littoral state. See Philip C. Jessup, The Law of Territorial Waters and Maritime Jurisdiction (New York: B.A. Jennings, 1927), xxxiii.
- 7.
Alfred P. Rubin, The Law of Piracy (Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College Press, 1988).
- 8.
Quoted, Caspar F. Goodrich, “Our Navy and the West Indian Pirates,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, (published in 11 installments), 43 (1916): 1173.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
James A. Williamson, A Short History of British Expansion (London: Macmillan, 1927), 20.
- 11.
Gardner W. Allen, Our Navy and the West Indian Pirates (Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1929), Appendix III, 97–98.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (London, Longmans Green, 1932), 316. Gosse’s Appendix “Piracy and the Law,” pp. 215–17, provides an epitome of piracy law.
- 14.
The Bill (passed in 1825) became statute law in 1826 (6 Geo. IV, cap. 49.).
- 15.
The history of prize courts falls beyond the bounds of this study.
- 16.
Allen, Our Navy and the West Indian Pirates, ix.
- 17.
Act for the more effectual Suppression of the African Slave Trade [31 March 1824], 5 Geo. IV, c.17. For discussion, see BFSP, 1823–24, pp. 122–23. Correspondence between the United States and the United Kingdom on this subject, 1823–24, is in BFSP, 1823–24, pp. 738ff.
- 18.
Niles, 26 March 1842.
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Gough, B., Borras, C. (2018). The Law of Piracy. In: The War Against the Pirates. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31414-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31414-7_3
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