[An example of the effect of the historical development of the Court upon the substantive Law of Admiralty]

I will commence with the action in rem, being that which is most resorted to, and which constitutes the peculiarity of the Court of Admiralty, and gives to it an advantage over other Courts having concurrent jurisdiction.

For centuries, the ability to proceed in the Admiralty Court directly against a ship has been the distinguishing feature of the Admiralty jurisdiction. The action in rem seems to have been employed in Admiralty before the Elizabethan era, but only by the nineteenth century had it become the dominant Admiralty procedure; and it was in the mid-nineteenth century–as a result of the dominance of the action in rem–that the modern theory of maritime liens [rights against the ship] began to evolve. The beginning of consideration of the action in rem itself must lie in the emergence of the theory of maritime liens, for the two have since become inextricably intertwined.

It has been truly said that ‘the beginning of wisdom in the law of maritime liens is that maritime liens and land liens have little in common’; for that reason, it is necessary to discard all preconceptions and to consult one of the few works which deal with the jurisprudence of maritime liens. (The discussion of lien jurisprudence in this work will be strictly limited to the nexus between maritime liens and the action in rem.)