ARRESTING A SHIP

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 124, 21 November 1925, Page 16

ARRESTING A SHIP

HOW IT IS DONE. With the arrest of the Thames whisky ship, General Serret, many people learned for the first time that a ship can be arrested (writes D. King-Page in the "Daily Mail"). The law of maritime arrest is very complicated, but it appears that having committed a crime a vessel can be followed until she is caught, even if she has passed into different ownership since her lapse from grace. She must, however, be arrested in a port where the Courts of the country which has ordered the arrest have jurisdiction, and there are many vessels afloat today that avoid making voyages to certain countries because there is a warrant out against them there.

The crimes that a vessel can commit are varied, but the most common is damaging another vessel, or piers, or docks, by collision. In such cases a vessel can be arrested until security for the damage v given or liability for damage has been decided in the Courts. Evading dock and harbour dues is another offence for which a vessel can bo arrested. As in the cast of the General Serrett, arrest can also be made on an allegation that tho owner has not paid some debt. A ship is arrested by nailing a warrant to a prominent part, generally a mast. Some vessels cannot be arrested, for they belong to nations and not to private owners, and by international law are immune from legal process. This was all very well when nations owned only warships and the like, because it was essential that a man-of-war about to sail for battle should not be held up in port on some frivolous pretext. To-day, however, many nations own commercial ships, and naturally the private shipowners resent the legal immunity which their State-owned competitors enjoy. So pressing has the matter become that the International Maritime Committee, which is about to meet at Genoa, is devoting much of its time to the discussion of the problem, and it is probable that international law dealing with the immunity of State-owned ships will shortly be amended.