/4/ The truth seems to be that the
forfeiture took place, but in a different court. A manuscript of
the reign of Henry VI., only recently printed, discloses the fact
that, if a man was killed or drowned at sea by the motion of the
ship, the vessel was forfeited to the admiral upon a proceeding
in the admiral's court, and subject to release by favor of the
admiral or the king. /5/
A ship is the most living of inanimate things. Servants sometimes
say "she" of a clock, but every one gives a gender to vessels.
And we need not be surprised, therefore, to find a mode of
dealing which has shown such extraordinary vitality in the
criminal law applied with even more striking thoroughness in the
Admiralty. It is only by supposing [27] the ship to have been
treated as if endowed with personality, that the arbitrary
seeming peculiarities of the maritime law can be made
intelligible, and on that supposition they at once become
consistent and logical.
By way of seeing what those peculiarities are, take first a case
of collision at sea. A collision takes place between two vessels,
the Ticonderoga and the Melampus, through the fault of the
Ticonderoga alone. That ship is under a lease at the time, the
lessee has his own master in charge, and the owner of the vessel
has no manner of control over it.
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