How to look for records of... High Court of Admiralty

4. 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 here separately. 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:

5. 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 Benefit of clergy was also withdrawn.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 catalogue, like the paper list from which it derives, largely lists the documents by type, for example, Proclamations of Sessions, Jury Precepts and so on. A relatively modern calendar and index is available at The National Archives. 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.

6. 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 neutral or friendly, and therefore ‘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.

All the papers after 1700 are catalogued by at least name of ship and master: those for the 1740s have been fully catalogued as part of the Prize Papers Project (see www.prizepapers.de).

There is a comprehensive guide to the series in the introductory note preceding the paper catalogue. The papers relating to each ship usually comprise Court Papers, being those produced for or by the Court, and Ship’s Papers, those impounded at the ship’s capture, to prove nationality. Some ships were also carrying mail in transit for delivery.  By their nature, the documents are usually in foreign languages, predominantly French, Spanish, Dutch, but with at least 15 other languages also found.

The following table shows the arrangement of the series HCA 32: work on improving cataloguing of this and separated collections of ships’ papers and mail in transit in HCA 30 has been ongoing since 2013. Droits of Admiralty in Prize are rights to ships seized in port, or to enemy ships taken without proper authorisation.

7. 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 and so on. Instance records and their means of reference are as follows:

These IND 1 volumes are available in the reading room at The National Archives.

Indexes to instance cases can also be found at HCA 56/1-61 for 1875-1946, at HCA 56/62 for 1860-1866, and at HCA 56/63-64 for 1772-1839.

8. 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 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
• 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.

9. Slave trade

In 1807 the slave trade was abolished in all British possessions and from 1808 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.

10. 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.

11. Other finding aids and indexes

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

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.

12. Glossary