The Tryal of Capt. William Kidd

The Tryal of Capt. William Kidd

Author: Don C. Seitz

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2013-02-06

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 048614836X

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Based on official admiralty records, this volume offers an astonishing glimpse into the world of 17th-century piracy, the English judicial system, and the dialogue from the actual trial.


The Admiralty Sessions, 1536-1834

The Admiralty Sessions, 1536-1834

Author: Gregory J. Durston

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2017-06-23

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1443873616

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The growth in England and Britain’s merchant marine from the medieval period onwards meant that an increasing number of criminal offences were committed on or against the country’s vessels while they were at sea. Between 1536 and 1834, such crimes were determined at the Admiralty Sessions if brought to trial. This was a special part of the wider Admiralty Court, which, unlike the other forums in that tribunal, used English common law procedure rather than Roman civil law to try its cases. To a modest extent, this produced a ‘hybrid’ court, dominated by the common law but influenced by aspects of Europe’s other major legal tradition. The Admiralty Sessions also had their own (highly singular) regime for executing convicts, used the Marshalsea prison to hold their suspects and displayed the Admiralty Court’s ceremonial silver oar at their hearings and hangings. During the near three centuries of its existence, the Admiralty Sessions faced enormous legal and logistical problems. The crimes they tried might occur thousands of miles and months of sailing time away from England. Assembling evidence that would ‘stand up’ in front of a jury was a constant challenge, not least because of the peripatetic lives of the seafarers who provided most of their witnesses. The forum’s relationship with terrestrial criminal courts in England was often difficult and the demarcation between their respective jurisdictions was complicated and subject to change. Despite all of these problems, the court experienced significant successes, as well as notable failures, in its battle to deal with a litany of serious maritime crimes, ranging from piracy to murder at sea. It also spawned a series of Vice-Admiralty Courts in English and British colonies around the world. This book documents the origins, development and abolition of the Admiralty Sessions. It discusses all of the major crimes that were determined by the forum, and examines some of the more arcane and unusual offences that ended up there. Some of the unusual challenges presented by the maritime environment, whether the impossibility of preserving dead bodies at sea, the extensive power given to captains to physically punish sailors, the difficulty of securing suspects in small vessels, or the often gruesome problems occasioned by the marginal legal status of slaves, are also considered in detail.


The Book of Buried Treasure

The Book of Buried Treasure

Author: Ralph Delahaye Paine

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2019-11-21

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13:

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"The Book of Buried Treasure" by Ralph Delahaye Paine. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.


The Punishment of Pirates

The Punishment of Pirates

Author: Matthew Norton

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-12-21

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0226823105

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A sociological investigation into maritime state power told through an exploration of how the British Empire policed piracy. Early in the seventeenth-century boom of seafaring, piracy allowed many enterprising and lawless men to make fortunes on the high seas, due in no small part to the lack of policing by the British crown. But as the British empire grew from being a collection of far-flung territories into a consolidated economic and political enterprise dependent on long-distance trade, pirates increasingly became a destabilizing threat. This development is traced by sociologist Matthew Norton in The Punishment of Pirates, taking the reader on an exciting journey through the shifting legal status of pirates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Norton shows us that eliminating this threat required an institutional shift: first identifying and defining piracy, and then brutally policing it. The Punishment of Pirates develops a new framework for understanding the cultural mechanisms involved in dividing, classifying, and constructing institutional order by tracing the transformation of piracy from a situation of cultivated ambiguity to a criminal category with violently patrolled boundaries—ending with its eradication as a systemic threat to trade in the English Empire. Replete with gun battles, executions, jailbreaks, and courtroom dramas, Norton’s book offers insights for social theorists, political scientists, and historians alike.