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

HCA 17

1807-1839

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.

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:

• HCA 15 = pieces 1-58
• HCA 16 = pieces 59-106
• HCA 17 = pieces 107-171
• HCA 18 = pieces 172-311
• HCA 19 = pieces 312-562
• HCA 20 = pieces 563-2261

An earlier version of the index is HCA 56/64

Other instance correspondence and papers are in HCA 52

An alphabetical index by ship names (now largely superseded by the online catalogue entries) is IND 1/9458

Public Record(s)

English

65 bundle(s)

Open

Topics

International

Litigation

Trade and commerce

Pay and pensions

Slavery

Navy

Armed Forces (General Administration)