Catharine of Rotterdam Prize Law Decision
Catharine of Rotterdam seized for enemy trade under double documents, and the courts uphold the Admiralty’s prize decree against Captain Gordon’s captors’ opponents while rejecting the owners’ reduction.
Catharine of Rotterdam’s voyage began as a straightforward commercial run but moved into dangerous waters because Europe was at war in the early 1700s, especially after 1701 when rival claimants fought over the Crown of Spain in the conflict known today as the War of the Spanish Succession; by late 1704 and early 1705, the British Crown under Queen Anne treated Spain and its dominions as enemy territory, and frigates were cruising to intercept vessels that might be aiding that enemy; into this setting sailed the Catharine of Rotterdam, a ship identified as belonging to subjects of the United Provinces, that is, the Dutch Republic, who were allies of Great Britain but who were also merchants seeking to keep their cargoes safe as they moved through seas policed by multiple navies with overlapping orders and suspicions.
According to the sworn materials presented later in court, the cargo was loaded in dominions belonging to Spain, more specifically tied to a voyage to or from the Canary Islands, which were Spanish territory; when the ship was stopped and searched, officers found that the master carried two inconsistent sets of papers, a practice called sailing with “double documents”; one set was designed to show an outward course to Lisbon and the other to the Canary Islands, and matching return papers described bills of lading as if from Madeira and also as if from the Canaries; the defenders of the ship called these precautions a defensive shield in wartime against harassment by allies and neutrals, but the seizing officer and the Admiralty later portrayed them as proof of a disguised and illicit trade to an enemy port.
The capture itself was executed by a yacht of Her Majesty’s service called the Mary under Captain Thomas Gordon, who brought the Catharine of Rotterdam into port as a suspected prize; the seizure thus moved from the deck to the courtroom, and the first judicial step took place before the High Court of Admiralty, which in prize matters had authority to investigate the voyage, papers, and the character of the trade; prize proceedings were not criminal prosecutions but civil condemnations of ship and cargo under the law of nations and royal proclamations; what mattered was not personal guilt but whether the vessel, voyage, and goods fell within rules that marked certain trades as lawful and others as forbidden.
After adducing proof on property, voyage, and papers, the High Court of Admiralty issued an interlocutor—that is, an order stating its conclusions; that order, as later quoted in the reduction suit, declared that it had been proven that the ship and the cargo belonged to subjects of the United Provinces, that the cargo was put aboard in territory belonging to Spain, which at that time was at war with the kingdom of Scotland in union with England under one sovereign, and that double documents were aboard; the court therefore adjudged both ship and cargo lawful prize; the date of that initial Admiralty ruling is not separately recorded in the later report, but it necessarily preceded the next event, a suit of reduction by the owners to set the decree aside.
The owners of the Catharine of Rotterdam and their factor, Gilbert Stewart, raised an action of reduction in the Court of Session to overturn the Admiralty decree on grounds they labeled iniquity; they structured their argument in several parts; first, they stressed that both ship and goods were owned by Dutch subjects, and the Dutch were allies, not enemies; second, they argued that double documents might be a reason to stop and bring in a ship for examination but were not, when property was clearly shown to be allied, a sufficient reason to condemn; they emphasized that the duplicate papers in this instance were not meant to disguise the ownership of the ship or cargo but to misstate the destination to avoid entanglements, a practice they described as common, lawful, and even necessary in wartime among confederates; third, they attacked the assumption that loading at the Canaries equaled trading with the enemy, because, they said, Her Majesty was allied with King Charles of Spain as the rightful monarch, and it was not fair to treat private persons living under a de facto ruler, like the Duke of Anjou claiming Spain, as enemies when they had not sworn allegiance to him; they added a diplomatic point: the States General, they said, allowed a free trade by Dutch subjects with Spain, and that policy should insulate the Catharine from confiscation by British courts.
In support of their second point about double documents, the owners cited earlier decisions from the 1670s involving ships called the Rostock, the Liveday, the Palm-tree, and the Patience; they read those cases to say that duplicate papers created a presumption that could be explained away by proof of neutral or allied ownership, and they insisted that proof existed here; they also described a practical seafaring reality: even army generals sometimes traveled with enemy passes; from this they reasoned that false or alternative passes were not by themselves marks of criminality when the underlying ownership and purpose were legitimate and when the aim was to avoid molestation by the common enemy.
The captors and the officers of state answered that the Admiralty had fairly summarized the proof and had rightly condemned; they accepted that property sat with Dutch subjects but said the decisive element was the voyage: the course and the cargo were tied to the Canaries, Spanish dominions, which made the trade enemy-facing; as to double documents, they argued the practice was not a minor irregularity but a calculated fraud designed to mislead and to carry supplies to the enemy under false colors; they noted instructions issued to Admiralties in Scotland and England in 1680 after disputes in an earlier Dutch war, interpreting these instructions and subsequent practice to support condemnation where doubles were found; they told the court that in England and elsewhere vessels trading with an enemy country were commonly condemned regardless of their owners’ nationality if the trade served the enemy’s needs.
The defenders also directly refuted the owners’ reliance on the alliance with King Charles of Spain; they pointed to a proclamation of war directed against “France and Spain, and all the subjects and dominions thereof,” a formula that treated the de facto control of Spanish dominions by the Duke of Anjou as decisive for prize law; the policy was that when the rightful king would obtain possession, the war would end, but until then the dominions under enemy control were enemy country; on this view, the Canaries were enemy territory because their governors obeyed Philip of Anjou and sent tolls and customs into coffers that funded operations against King Charles and his allies; from that standpoint, private persons who took cargoes to and from those ports strengthened the enemy, regardless of whether owners were Dutch or whether individual island merchants had personally sworn oaths.
They then returned to the practical and evidentiary side of the capture; they told the court that the double documents aboard the Catharine of Rotterdam were not merely different routes printed side-by-side but had been concealed in the bottom of a water cask, wrapped in cered cloth to keep them dry and sunk with a lead bullet, a method of hiding that, to the officers, betrayed a guilty intent; they emphasized that such concealment, together with the enemy voyage, made condemnation proper; they added that allies had no wider privileges than neutrals in such a case because being “socii belli,” partners in war, would make clandestine trade with the common enemy worse, not better.
The owners’ political argument about the true king of Spain met a firm response; the officers noted that prize law cannot turn on abstract right when war turns on possession and control; a hypothetical was offered: would a French prize court release an English or Scottish ship on the claim that Britain’s true sovereign was another, while Britain had declared war under a different ruler; the rhetorical answer was obvious—such pleas would be mocked, and ships would be condemned because the reality of war and proclamations controlled; the implication was that British courts should apply the same principle without allowing the formal alliance with Charles III to erase the character of Spanish ports occupied and administered by his rival.
When the matter came before the Lords of Session, the bench addressed two linked questions: whether double documents alone, in the hands of an ally, were enough to condemn, and whether trading to the Canaries counted as trading with the enemy; on the first, the Lords indicated that for allies double documents might not, by themselves, be sufficient for condemnation because they were a usual stratagem to protect commerce during conflict; but on the second point—trade with enemy dominions—they were clear that a voyage to enemy-controlled territory together with the duplicate and hidden papers formed a lawful ground for adjudication; the Admiralty’s focus on the voyage, and the integration of the papers with the enemy destination, was central.
The bench also treated the geographical and political status of the Canaries as equal to any core province of Spain; distant islands were still Spanish dominions, and because their governors obeyed Philip of Anjou and forwarded revenues to his treasury, goods traded there would assist his war effort; they noted practical effects: such tolls and customs could be used immediately against the allied cause, for example in operations aimed at retaking Gibraltar, which the allied fleet had captured in August 1704; the reasoning was not theoretical but tied to how trade supported cannon, pay, and victuals that made war possible.
This outcome preserved the Admiralty’s original decree; the Court of Session repelled the reasons of reduction, meaning it rejected the owners’ grounds for setting aside the condemnation; the legal result was that the Catharine of Rotterdam and her cargo remained condemned as lawful prize; the date of this decision was 23 February 1705, and by 27 February 1705 the owners had entered an appeal against the sentence, a procedural step recorded by the reporter but not successful in changing the practical effect of the ruling as noted in the summary; the report also cited older case references and the practice under the late kings Charles II and James VII and II to confirm that double documents, particularly when concealed and combined with enemy trade, were treated as strong evidence justifying condemnation.
Behind the legal phrases lay a straightforward story a child could understand: a Dutch-owned ship sailed to Spanish islands during a war when Spain was an enemy, carrying two different sets of papers to make it look as if it were on safe routes; a British captain stopped the ship, found the hidden papers, and took the ship to court; the first court looked at where the ship sailed and the hidden papers and said the ship and its goods would be taken for the Crown because the voyage helped the enemy; the owners then asked a higher court to undo that decision by saying they were friends, not enemies, and that the double papers were just a shield; the higher court replied that being friends did not give a free pass to trade with the enemy, that the islands were enemy territory because they paid money to the enemy ruler, and that the hidden papers made the story worse, so the first decision would stand.
The case also showed how wartime law measures conduct by its effect on the enemy’s strength rather than by sympathies or theoretical loyalties; the owners said the rightful King of Spain was on their side, but the court measured the ports by who actually controlled them and took their customs; that focus on possession and contribution to the enemy war chest made the trade unlawful even if friend-nation merchants owned the ship and cargo; as a result, the practical advice to merchants was simple: do not sail to enemy ports or carry papers designed to hide that you did.
The discussion of Dutch trade policy received short shrift; even if the States General permitted Dutch merchants to trade with Spain, British courts would not let those private treaties or domestic policies undo the effect of a British proclamation of war, which by its own force shut down commerce with enemy dominions; the law of prize in British courts could not be contracted out by third countries unless Her Majesty consented; this preserved a unified wartime policy and avoided a patchwork where allies could undermine each other’s blockades by secret exemptions.
The reference to instructions issued in 1680 to the Scottish and English Admiralties was an important historical link; those directions were said to have been developed after hard lessons in earlier wars and to have been confirmed by decisions in multiple cases; the court did not publish the full text of those instructions in the report, but the citation shows that the bench saw itself as applying a settled approach rather than inventing a new rule; the Admiralty and the Session emphasized continuity: a ship sailing under allied ownership could still be condemned if it pursued an enemy trade, and double documents aggravated the suspicion, especially when physically hidden.
The physical concealment mattered; wrapping papers in a cered cloth and submerging them in a cask, weighted with a lead bullet, painted a picture of intentional deception; courts infer purpose from acts, and hiding papers speaks loudly; the owners’ effort to downgrade the practice as a common ruse to reduce delays did not overcome the inference that the ship was taking steps to avoid detection not by the enemy alone but by any cruising authority who might demand to see the true course; that gap between the benign explanation and the stark method of concealment made the owners’ story hard to accept.
On 23 February 1705 the Court of Session stated its conclusion in simple terms: the reasons offered to reduce the Admiralty’s decree were repelled; that formula meant the Admiralty’s condemnation remained in full force; the court’s remarks added that while duplicate papers alone might not always condemn a friendly ship, in this case the combination of doubles and enemy trade did; the principle extracted by later editors summarized the holding: a ship loaded in an enemy’s dominions with double documents aboard, though owned by subjects of allies, may be adjudged prize; the report’s headnote captured that rule in a single sentence to guide future readers and courts.
The owners’ last-mentioned step, an appeal entered on 27 February 1705, suggests they sought further review of the Session’s stance, but the report emphasizes the Session’s immediate holding and the Admiralty’s decree, leaving the core lesson intact; British and Scottish courts warned allies that partnership in war did not shield a merchant who serviced the enemy’s ports; that warning was anchored in a wartime economy where every toll, duty, and customs receipt could be turned into powder, shot, or pay; thus the ship and its cargo, though Dutch, fell to condemnation because the Canaries were treated as enemy dominions and the documentation was designed to mislead.
From beginning to end the chain of events was linear and clear: capture by Captain Gordon of the Mary while the Catharine of Rotterdam was returning from the Canary Islands; condemnation by the High Court of Admiralty based on proof of allied ownership, enemy loading, and double documents; a reduction suit by the owners arguing alliance, the necessity and lawfulness of doubles, and the nonenemy status of Canary trade; an answer by the officers of state emphasizing the proclamation of war against Spanish dominions, the concealment of papers, the lack of any binding free-trade treaty overriding British policy, and the practical contribution of Canary customs to the enemy war chest; and a final decision on 23 February 1705 by the Lords of Session repelling the reduction and leaving the condemnation in place; when the owners appealed on 27 February 1705, the legal principle already stood: courts would treat trade with enemy dominions as unlawful and would use hidden duplicate papers as strong evidence of a voyage meant to evade scrutiny in support of the enemy.
The final outcome was that the Catharine of Rotterdam and her cargo remained condemned as lawful prize, the owners’ action of reduction failed on 23 February 1705, and the courts affirmed that trading with enemy dominions is forbidden even for subjects of an allied state; the legal meaning was precise: allied ownership does not immunize a ship if the voyage strengthens the enemy, and duplicate or concealed documents, when paired with an enemy port of loading or destination, justify condemnation; the rule protected wartime policy by closing loopholes and ensured that proclamations of war against “France and Spain, and all the subjects and dominions thereof” were effective across seas patrolled by Her Majesty’s ships; by keeping that rule, the courts aligned prize law with the practical demands of war and signaled to all merchants that the path to safety lay not in secret papers but in avoiding enemy harbors during declared hostilities.
