The Archives

The ArchivesInstitutionsThe Colonial Vice-Admiralty Courts

The Colonial Vice-Admiralty Courts

The standing English, later British, maritime tribunals seated across the overseas plantations, together with the special commissioned courts of admiralty that under the piracy statute of 1698 to 1700 could try, condemn and execute pirates in the colonies without a jury and without sending them to England.

Also writtenvice-admiralty courts; colonial courts of admiralty; special court of admiralty; the piracy commission; court of vice-admiralty

Under the piracy statute of 1698 to 1700 the Crown could commission courts of admiralty that tried, condemned and hanged pirates in the colonies without a jury and without sending them to England. Those commissions were the principal legal instrument by which the British state suppressed golden-age piracy in the plantations.1

The standing court and the commission

Two bodies are commonly blurred. The standing vice-admiralty court was a permanent bench with a revenue and prize jurisdiction. The court that hanged pirates was an ad hoc commission, summoned for a trial and dissolved when it ended. They overlapped in personnel, and colonial governors are recorded as holding vice-admiralty commissions as well, but the two were constituted under different authorities and did different work. Contemporary and later accounts routinely conflate the two.2

The standing court

The extension of this jurisdiction to the colonies belongs to the 1690s. The Navigation Act of 1696, 7 and 8 William III chapter 22, An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade, provided that the penalties and forfeitures it imposed might be recovered in any of the King's courts at Westminster, in the Kingdom of Ireland, or in the court of admiralty held in the plantations where the offence was committed, at the pleasure of the officer or informer, so that offences against the trade laws could be tried in admiralty in the colonies. In that standing form the court took prize, condemnations of captured vessels, wreck, salvage, seamen's wages and, increasingly, the Navigation Acts and the customs revenue. Procedure was civil law: written libels and answers, examination of witnesses, decision by one judge, who held an Admiralty commission and was served by a register, a marshal and an advocate for the Crown. There was no jury, which made the court efficient and made it resented: colonial merchants in revenue cases preferred a common-law jury.3

Trial in England before 1700

The capital jurisdiction over piracy sat elsewhere. Piracy was tried under the Offences at Sea Act 1536, 28 Henry VIII chapter 15, which the later Act recites as enacting that treasons, felonies, robberies, murders and confederacies committed on the sea should be enquired of, tried and determined according to the common course of the laws of the land, and which in practice meant sending offenders into England to be tried within the realm, at great trouble and charge, arraigned at the Old Bailey. For a capture made in the Red Sea or on the Guinea coast that was slow, costly and often impossible, and through the 1690s the merchants of New York and Rhode Island fitted out pirates with little fear of any colonial court. William Kidd is the standing example: taken in the colonies, shipped home, tried in London in 1701 at the Admiralty Sessions held by the King's commission on 8 and 9 May, on six indictments and before a grand jury and a sworn petty jury rather than by a colonial commission, and hanged at Execution Dock on the 23rd. His case falls after the new statute: the colonial commissions did not replace trial in England at once or uniformly.4

The Act for the more effectual suppression of piracy

The Act, passed in the session of 1698 to 1699 and printed in the Statutes of the Realm as chapter 7 of 11 William III, removed that burden. It authorised the Crown to commission courts of admiralty "in any Place at Sea or upon the Land in any of His Majesties Islands Plantations Colonies Dominions Forts or Factories", there to try, condemn and execute pirates. The court was to "consist of Seaven Persons at the least", drawn from royal officials, admiralty judges, governors, councillors and the commanders of the King's ships in the colony. Where seven could not be gathered, any three qualified persons could summon others to make up the number.5

The Act is cited both as 11 William III chapter 7 and as 11 and 12 William III chapter 7; the variance follows from the session straddling regnal years.

How a commissioned court worked

The commissioners' powers were capital. They could arraign, try, convict, sentence and order the execution of persons charged with piracy, robbery and felony on the high seas, and could deal with accessories. One member presided as president: he took the oath first, administered it to the others, and at the close "collect[ed] all the Votes of the Persons who doe sit and have Voices in the said Court". Guilt and sentence were decided by those votes. There was no petty jury at any stage.6

Sentence was carried out locally, characteristically by hanging at or near the low-water mark, the admiralty place of execution, bodies sometimes hung in chains afterwards. A captured crew could be tried and hanged within weeks of capture, in the colony that held them.

The term of the Act

The Act was not permanent. It was to be "in force for Seaven Yeares and to the End of the next Session of Parliament after the Expiration of the said Seaven Yeares and no longer". It was renewed more than once, and the Piracy Act 1721, 8 George I chapter 24, amended and reinforced it. The machinery was therefore available across the whole golden age.7

Three trials

Stede Bonnet, the "gentleman pirate", was tried at Charles Town in 1718 before a vice-admiralty court under the colony's judge Nicholas Trott, and hanged at White Point on 10 December 1718. John Rackham and his company were tried at St Jago de la Vega in Jamaica in November 1720; Rackham hanged, while Anne Bonny and Mary Read pleaded their pregnancies and escaped immediate execution, all of it in the printed Tryals of Captain John Rackam and other Pirates. The crews of Bartholomew Roberts, taken after Chaloner Ogle's Swallow defeated him at Cape Lopez in February 1722, were tried at Cape Coast Castle that spring under Mungo Herdman of the Royal Navy, the largest single pirate trial of the era: numerous hangings, several men gibbeted along the coast, others acquitted or sentenced to servitude.8

What the courts left behind

The courts long outlasted the pirates. Their standing revenue jurisdiction became one of the sharpest colonial grievances of the 1760s, when Sugar Act and Stamp Act enforcement routed customs cases into these jury-free courts. The 1700 commission left a principle: piracy could be tried summarily wherever it was suppressed. The printed reports these courts generated survive as some of the richest documentary sources for the period.

What the sources cannot yet give is the paperwork of the courts themselves. The commissions that constituted each piracy court, its membership colony by colony, and the overlap between the standing bench and the summoned panel would be settled by the records at Kew in the High Court of Admiralty, Colonial Office and Privy Council series, none of which has been consulted. The numbers hanged, gibbeted and acquitted at Charles Town and at Cape Coast Castle have not been counted from the printed Tryals themselves. The statutes quoted above are given from the Statutes of the Realm as printed; the chain of continuances between 1706 and 1719 has not been traced there.

What the evidence does not settle

Piracy Act renewal chain, 1706 to 1719

  • Chain of Piracy Act renewals from 1706 to 1719 unclear

Piracy Act's regnal citation

  • Whether the Piracy Act is 11 William III chapter 7Confirmed

Overlap between vice admiralty court and piracy commission personnel

  • Personnel overlap between vice admiralty court and piracy commission unresolved

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The courts of admiralty commissioned under the piracy statute of 1698 to 1700 were the principal legal instrument by which the British state suppressed golden-age piracy in the colonies. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Statute: "William III, 1698 to 9: An Act for the more effectuall Suppression of Piracy [Chapter VII]", Statutes of the Realm, vol. 7, pp. 590 to 594, British History Online
  2. The standing vice-admiralty court and the ad hoc court of admiralty commissioned to try pirates were distinct bodies constituted under different authorities, although they overlapped in personnel. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Statute: "William III, 1698 to 9: An Act for the more effectuall Suppression of Piracy [Chapter VII]", Statutes of the Realm, vol. 7, pp. 590 to 594, British History Online
  3. The Navigation Act of 1696, 7 and 8 William III chapter 22, "An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade", provided that the penalties and forfeitures it imposed might be recovered in any of the King's courts at Westminster, in the Kingdom of Ireland, or in the court of admiralty held in the plantations where the offence was committed, at the pleasure of the officer or informer, so that offences against the trade laws could be tried in admiralty in the colonies. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: "William III, 1695-6: An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade", 7 and 8 William III chapter 22, section VI, in Statutes of the Realm, volume 7, 1695 to 1701, ed. John Raithby (1820), pp. 103 to 107, read on British History Online: the penalties and forfeitures are "To bee recovered in any of His Majesties Courts att Westminster or in the Kingdome of Ireland or in the Court of Admiralty held in His Majesties Plantations respectively where such Offence shall bee committed att the Pleasure of the Officer or Informer"
  4. Before the piracy statute of 1698 to 1700, piracy was tried under the Offences at Sea Act 1536, 28 Henry VIII chapter 15, which the later Act recites as enacting that treasons, felonies, robberies, murders and confederacies committed on the sea should be enquired of, tried and determined according to the common course of the laws of the land, and which in practice meant sending offenders into England to be tried within the realm at great trouble and charge. William Kidd was tried accordingly in London, at the Admiralty Sessions held by the King's commission at the Old Bailey on 8 and 9 May 1701, on six indictments, before a grand jury and a sworn petty jury, and not by a colonial commission; he was executed at Execution Dock on the 23rd. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute and a printed trial: "William III, 1698-9: An Act for the more effectuall Suppressions of Piracy", 11 and 12 William III chapter 7, in Statutes of the Realm, volume 7, 1695 to 1701, ed. John Raithby (1820), pp. 590 to 594, read on British History Online, reciting the earlier statute: "Whereas by an Act of Parliament made in the Twenty eighth Yeare of the Reigne of King Henry the Eighth it is enacted that Treasons Felonies Robberies Murthers and Confederacies committed on the Sea shall be enquired of tryed and determined according to the common Course of the Laws of this Land used for such Offences upon the Land within this Realme", and that offenders in remote parts "cannot be brought to condign Punishment without great Trouble and Charges in sending them into England to be tryed within the Realme as the said Statute directs"; The Arraignment, Tryal, and Condemnation of Captain William Kidd, for Murther and Piracy, upon Six several Indictments, at the Admiralty-Sessions, held by His Majesty's Commission at the Old-Baily, on Thursday the 8th and Friday the 9th of May, 1701 (London, printed for J. Nutt, 1701), read from the Internet Archive scan, whose proceedings open "The King's Commission for holding the Court, being first read" and record "The Jury Sworn, were", and whose title page adds that he "was accordingly Executed at Execution-Dock the 23d"
  5. The Act for the more effectual suppression of piracy, printed in the Statutes of the Realm as chapter 7 of 11 William III, authorised the Crown to commission courts of admiralty "in any Place at Sea or upon the Land in any of His Majesties Islands Plantations Colonies Dominions Forts or Factories" to try, condemn and execute pirates, the court to "consist of Seaven Persons at the least". Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: "William III, 1698-9: An Act for the more effectuall Suppression of Piracy [Chapter VII]", Statutes of the Realm, vol. 7, pp. 590-594, British History Online
  6. Under the commissions the court could arraign, try, convict, sentence and order the execution of persons charged with piracy, robbery and felony on the high seas, one member presiding as president and at the close collecting "all the Votes of the Persons who doe sit and have Voices in the said Court", guilt and sentence being decided by those votes with no petty jury at any stage. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: "William III, 1698-9: An Act for the more effectuall Suppression of Piracy [Chapter VII]", Statutes of the Realm, vol. 7, pp. 590-594, British History Online
  7. The Act was to be "in force for Seaven Yeares and to the End of the next Session of Parliament after the Expiration of the said Seaven Yeares and no longer", and was continued more than once before the Piracy Act 1721, 8 George I chapter 24, left the commission machinery available across the whole golden age. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Statutes: "William III, 1698 to 9: An Act for the more effectuall Suppression of Piracy [Chapter VII]", Statutes of the Realm, vol. 7, pp. 590 to 594, British History Online; The Statutes Project, "1721: 8 George 1 c.24: The Piracy Act", statutes.org.uk
  8. Commissioned courts of admiralty tried Stede Bonnet at Charles Town in 1718 under Nicholas Trott, John Rackham and his company at St Jago de la Vega in Jamaica in November 1720, and the captured crews of Bartholomew Roberts at Cape Coast Castle in the spring of 1722 under Mungo Herdman of the Royal Navy. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed trial report and institutional secondary sources: "The Tryals of Captain John Rackam and other Pirates", printed 1721, National Library of Jamaica copy digitised via Internet Archive; Charleston County Public Library (Charleston Time Machine), "The Charleston Pirate Trials of 1718" and "The Pirate Executions of 1718"; Royal Museums Greenwich, "Death of Bartholomew Roberts"; Matthew Norton, The Punishment of Pirates: Interpretation and Institutional Order in the Early Modern British Empire, 2023