Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
CRIMES COMMITTED ON BOARD FOREIGN SHIPS ON THE HIGH SEAS AND THE JURISDICTION OF THE ENGLISH COURTS
J. Kodwo Bentil,
Department of Legal Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Except for the commission of certain crimes of an international nature, such as engaging in acts of piracy1 or slave trading,2 domestic or national criminal courts have no jurisdiction to try and punish any other crimes committed on the high seas. This has been a recognised principle of public international law.3 However, public international law recognises, at the same time, the principle that a State, whose flag a ship flies, has jurisdiction to deal with any crime committed on board such a ship on the high seas.4 Consequently, the criminal courts of such a State have jurisdiction to try and punish crimes committed on board any such ship, even though they may have been committed on the high seas.
Even long before this latter principle of public international law came to be recognised English law tended to give it expression. Thus, an English statute of 15365 vested the English courts of criminal jurisdiction with power to try and punish
“treasons, felonies, robberies, murders and confederacies … committed upon the sea”.
This became better articulated under the Offences at Sea Act 1799. By this latter legislation, it was provided that:
“all and every offence and offences, which after the passing of this Act, shall be committed upon the high seas out of the body of any county of this realm, shall be, and they are hereby declared to be offences … liable to the same punishments respectively, as if they had been committed upon the shore”.
Although almost all the provisions of the Offences at Sea Act 1799 were repealed by the Criminal Law Act 1967, the provision, just referred to, was left unrepealed by this latter legislation.
1 See Arts. 14 and 19 of the Geneva Convention on the High Seas of 1958. See also Arts. 100 and 105 of the Draft United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. (UN Document A/CONF.62/WP.10/rev.3 of Aug. 27, 1980; (1980) 19 Int. Legal Materials 1131, at p. 1178.)
2 See Art. 13 of the Geneva Convention on the High Seas of 1958. See also Art. 99 of the United Nations Draft Convention on the Law of the Sea, ibid.
3 See the case of The S.S. Lotus (1927) P.C.I.J. Ser. A, No. 10; 2 W.C.R. 20; decided by the Permanent Court of International Justice.
4 Articles 5 and 6 of the Geneva Convention on the High Seas of 1958. See also Arts. 96 and 97 of the United Nations Draft Convention on the Law of the Sea, supra, notes (1)—(2).
5 Namely, “An Acte for Punysshment of Pyrotes and Robbers of the See”.
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