3.1 Early law

From very early times Admiralty was restricted to things done upon the seas by the statutes of Richard II in the years 1389 and 1391. But they still enabled a wide range of matters to fall within the jurisdiction. ¹ Blackstone wrote that Admiralty had “jurisdiction and power to try and determine all maritime causes…committed on the high seas, out of the reach of our ordinary courts of justice”. Such causes he said are remedied “in a peculiar court of their own”. ² As to things other than contracts, John Godolphin ³ wrote in 1661 that “the Jurisdiction of the Admiralty is limited as to the Locality upon or beyond the Sea”. As to cases of damage occurring at sea Dr Brown ⁴ was clear that for such damage “remedy may be had in the admiralty, but not if it happens within the body of a county”. The cases which frequently arose in admiralty he said were those of “collision, or ships running foul of one another, by which one or both are sunk or battered”. At the same time, however, he expressed the view that no lien arose in such cases: “The torts of the master cannot be supposed to hypothecate the ship; nor, in my humble judgment, in strictness of speech, to produce any lien on it”. ⁵