MARRIAGES AT SEA

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 18 September 1926, Page 11

MARRIAGES AT SEA

CEREMONY FILLED NEEDS OF PAST

BUT IS OF DOUBTFUL VALIDITY.

The novelist often, tidies up a tangle in his plot, by marrying off one of his couples at sea. the- captain 'acting as the god in the /machine and starting the hero and heroine off on that fairy tale life which, is happy ever after. The novelist, of the future will have to be. warv (savs the London correspondent of a New Zealand eontemporarv). For the idea that the captain of'a ship may legally solemnise a marriage has been dropped on hard by the United States Shipping Board. The fact that iconoclastic America!" dr trampling with both feet on one of outmost cherished illusions, is making us look up authorities here. Apparently this is one more ease in which custom' has been outrun by modern invention.. Tt is true that a captain may in certain eases tie the knot.just as he is empowered to 'deal with other emergencies which the trials of life at sea may entail. Obviously, when voyages are 'lengthy and perilous', •it tyas a master mariner’s lot to' face problems which nowadays he may finite easily postpone to the end of a modern voyage. It is hard to conceive what circumstances would justify a wedding on a truns-Atlantic crossing, or even in the six weeks it takes; to go down under, that the pair won’t wait for a parson on shore. The general principle of English law about marriages on the high seas is that they must be valid by the law of the ship’s country. All that can be said now is that a marriage at sea, if performed by an episcopally ordained minister, is probably valid at common law without the. preliminaries of banns

or licence. But the most recent authorities. are of the opinion that inutile case of a marriage of necessity the presence of a minister may. be dispensed with, and the captain or other person in. authority, may officiate, provided it '.is clear that both parties free]v consented, and intended to marry. • By the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, all marriages aboard ship have to be entered in the. ship’s log. There are different rules for marriages on naval ships, and Admiralty orders lav down what • oflicers.'-may -perforrrr~ t h c-crere many and in what circumstances it may be. performed. The question whether a marriage performed: by a merchant captain is valid or not lias never been' specifically decided by the. English Courts, though there is an Irish ease (Du Moulin v. Druitt, 1860) .which seems to point to such a union being .invalid. In that case a marriage was celebrated in 1817, in a British transport bound for New South Wales, by tlie civil commander of the ship. As for the position on board Ameri-can-owned vessels, and the ,announcement that captains of American vessels have no authority to perform a legal marriage on the high seas, it is at once asked: Does one rule hold: with regard to all tho States? For -it a notorious fact that their matrimonial laws differ. The, announcement, therefore, is bound to 1 create a certain dismay in the hearts' of those who have been married at sea on an American ship, and doubtless the lawyers will reap some harvest in stilling the fears or confirming the hopes of persons thus joined. ’>