Catalogue description High Court of Admiralty: Instance Court: Instance Papers, Series II

Search within or browse this series to find specific records of interest.

Date range

Details of HCA 17
Reference: HCA 17
Title: High Court of Admiralty: Instance Court: Instance Papers, Series II
Description:

These papers comprise one of the six series of instance papers. They continue two earlier series of instance papers, and are themselves continued in series III to V.

The papers include a wide variety of documents, such as affidavits, allegations, answers, decrees, petitions, etc, as well as accounts, bills of lading, ships' logs, etc. The proceedings to which they relate concern such matters as commercial disputes (e.g. in connection with bottomry), collision, salvage, wages, etc.

There are also appeals from Vice-Admiralty Courts, some of which relate to the slave trade and slavery. (Slave trade captures were heard in the wartime Prize Court before 1816.)

Progress of these cases can be found in the Instance Assignation Books in HCA 7.

Date: 1807-1839
Arrangement:

Arranged by the original bundle (referred to as 'folio') numbers, which form a single sequence across the whole series. These folio numbers are also used as item numbers within the current catalogue references. Entries in the related indexes (HCA 56/64 and IND 1/9458) giving folio numbers between 3062 and 4065 seem to refer to papers that have not survived.

HCA 56/64 also indicates the type of action (beating, bottomry, damage, posession, restraint, salvage, wages, etc) of each case.

Note that series HCA 15-20 share a single sequence of piece numbers:

Related material:

Other instance correspondence and papers are in HCA 52

An earlier version of the index is HCA 56/64

An alphabetical index by ship names (now largely superseded by the online catalogue entries) is IND 1/9458

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

High Court of Admiralty, Instance Court, 1660-1875

Physical description: 65 bundle(s)
Access conditions: Open

Have you found an error with this catalogue description?

Help with your research

How to look for...