Work of The Court After 1840
The jurisdiction of the British court of admiralty was extended in both 1840 and in 1861 by the Admiralty Court Acts of 1840 and 1861. That increase in jurisdiction did not flow down to the New South Wales court. The British Parliament passed the Vice Admiralty Courts Act 1863 (UK) to confirm the colonial jurisdiction of the courts as well as giving them jurisdiction over ships mortgages, disputes over ownership or possession of ships, employment, the earnings of any registered ship, claims for master’s wages, towage and building or repairing ships. The Act provided for an appeal to the Privy Council and also allowed the judge of the court to appoint a registrar or marshal locally, rather than wait on an appointment from the United Kingdom. However, these changes did not make the court a local court, and the court was still an Imperial Court of the United Kingdom.
In 1868, the Victorian registered schooner Daphne chartered by Ross Lewin and skippered by John Daggett recruited islanders from the islands of Tanna, Erromango, Efate, Loyalty and Banks as indentured labour for employment on Queensland sugarcane fields. This was under Queensland’s Polynesian Labourers Act. That Act required a ship to have a license to undertake that work. The license required the vessel to uphold certain minimum conditions as to the state and fitness of the vessel to carry labourers. The license for the Daphne was for a maximum of 58 labourers that could be conveyed to Queensland on each voyage.
At this some point during a second voyage to Queensland, it was decided to sail to the island of Fiji where the recruiters could obtain six pounds Sterling for each of the 108 islanders, rather than nine pounds Sterling for the 58 islanders which they were permitted to carry to Queensland. The licence was in Lewin’s name but he remained on the island of Tanna. The Daphne sailed on to Levuka where it was intercepted by HMS Rosario on patrol from Sydney. The ship’s captain George Palmer suspected that the Daphne was a slaver ship, detained it, and conveyed it to Sydney.
Palmer brought proceedings in the court to have the Daphne condemned under the British slave trade laws. An earlier magistrate’s committal hearing for the crime of piracy was dismissed. The case was heard by Sir Alfred Stephen, who was the Chief Justice of New South Wales, and held the appointment of judge commissary in the Vice-Admiralty Court. Stephen dismissed the case on 24 September on the basis that the British Slave Trade Act 1839 did not apply to the South Pacific Ocean
Read more about this topic: Vice Admiralty Court (New South Wales)
Famous quotes containing the words work of the, work of, work and/or court:
“The work of the miner has its unavoidable incidents of discomfort and danger, and these should not be increased by the neglect of the owners to provide every practicable safety appliance. Economies which involve a sacrifice of human life are intolerable.”
—Benjamin Harrison (18331901)
“In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.”
—Samuel Butler (18351902)
“As to Don Juan, confess ... that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (17881824)