Under Sir William Scott, arguably the greatest Judge of its long history, the High Court of Admiralty was during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars one of the most influential legal bodies in the land. It dealt not only with the technicalities of seizures in prize, but with the numerous related issues of nationality, neutrality, sovereignty and jurisdiction at a time when all those matters were frequently fluid and their application uncertain.

The law that the Court sought to administer was not the common law of England, but international law, or the law of nations as it was then (perhaps more accurately) called. The procedures of the Court, situated at Doctors’ Commons, were in contested cases adversarial rather than investigative, thus following British legal tradition, but most of the evidence was documentary and witnesses were seldom called in person. Scott himself was at pains to point out the principles on which he was working; early in his incumbency he said:

In consequence, Scott's judgments often had much to say on the law of nations as then understood, and many of the principles he enunciated have survived, in customary or codified form, to this day. That is not to say that he took no account of English interpretations of the law, where differences existed; on such matters as the Rule of the War of 1756 or the 1753 Opinion of the Law Officers on the Silesian Loan, he followed English practice rather than making concessions to continental contentions based upon the principle of ‘free ships free goods’.

Fortunately, all Scott's major judgments survive, as reported by three authorities: Christopher Robinson, Thomas Edwards and John Dodson. The reporters were clearly aided by Scott's habit of writing down his judgments in full. He was, by some accounts, not a fluent extempore speaker and this has been a benefit to history. While the judgments which follow are, technically, already published work, they are available only in specialised libraries and it is believed that they fall therefore within the criteria of the Navy Records Society.

They are, moreover, supplemented here by much previously unpublished material, nearly all from the National Archive.

Duckworth arrived back at Plymouth [232] in time for his ship to become peripherally involved in the mutinies of 1797. He first set about persuad-ing the Admiralty to disgorge his pay and expenses due from his ser-vice in Jamaica [233–235], and for two weeks his correspondence shows no apprehension of trouble or knowledge of events at Portsmouth. The mutiny began at Spithead on 17 April, and a week later Sir John Orde, commanding at Plymouth, claimed that it was all over [237, 238]; cer-tainly the issues at the heart of the Portsmouth strike were on the way to resolution, through the moderation of the men's demands, the forbear-ance of Earl Spencer, and the good sense of Lord Howe and some other admirals. But the wider issue was not actually resolved yet, and there continued to be other outbreaks for several months.

At Plymouth the mutiny came late in May. On Leviathan Duck-worth was put off the ship, with most of his officers, only Lieuten-ant William Buchanan staying on board [241–243]. The men produced a well-written document of their grievances (someone on board was well-educated and produced better English prose than most of the offi-cers), but by exaggerating and inventing items which could not be true, they spoiled their case [239]. Duckworth was outraged at his treatment [244], but returned to the ship and saw that the crew was ‘turned over’. Even so collective demands still came [253, 307], but the crew knew that Duckworth was reluctant to impose punishments and were count-ing on this.

By August the ship was at sea once again, off Ushant enforcing the blockade of Brest [256–267]. Then after only two months he was sent on to south-west Ireland [270, 271]. The revolutionary rhetoric which had inspired black slaves in the West Indies, and white naval seamen (whose condition was close to slavery), also inspired the sub-jugated Irish population, where French military intervention could be decisive. Duckworth was sent to Bantry Bay so suddenly that he had no idea at first what he was to do, a sense of confusion aggravated by the difficulty of communicating with the local commander-in-chief, Admiral Robert Kingsmill [273–282]. But he soon settled to patrol-ling around the dangerous, rock-bound, mountainous coast from Cork to the Shannon estuary.

In fact, he was present on patrol along the Irish coast in the period between two French invasions.