ing the sentence of the Barbados Vice-Admiralty Court in a Navigation Acts 
violation case, regarded the King in Council as the proper appellate body. 316 
When Georgia became a royal colony, in 1754, the colony Attorney General 
advised establishment of a court of admiralty held by the governor as viceadmiral 
or by his deputy. This court was to try breaches of the Acts of Trade 
and determine controversies concerning salvage, mariner's wages, and other 
maritime affairs. From its sentences appeal was to be allowed to the High 
Court of Admiralty. 317 
In 1754 the High Court of Delegates asserted the right of appeal in Navigation 
Acts cases from the vice-admiralty courts of the plantations to the High 
Court of Admiralty. 318 But in a 1758 communication to the Board of Trade, 
Governor Thomas of the Leeward Islands assumed without question that appeals 
from the vice-admiralty courts lay to the King in Council. 319 Contrari- 
Majesty declares it is not his intention in any 
thing to derogate by the said commission; and 
though by Acts of Parliament made since the 
commencement of the war appeals or causes 
of capture from the enemy lie from this court 
to Delegates for that purpose appointed, yet 
as these acts do not extend to seizures for 
breaches of the Acts of Trade the High Court 
of Admiralty of England in the present case 
must of course retain its antient authority, 
jurisdiction and right, from which His 
Majesty has declared he had no intent in any 
thing to derogate. And for these reasons upon 
serious and mature consideration I do hereby 
order and adjudge that the admission of the 
appeal as it now stands specified and expressed 
in writing be denied and that the same be accordingly 
repelled" (MS So. Car. Adm. Rec., 
Vols. C and D, 483-86). An appeal to the 
High Court of Admiralty was then admitted 
(ibid., 489). For the denial of the appeal in 
Goolde qui tarn v. Vrouw Dorothea, see ibid., 
557-58. On the condemnation of the Vrouw 
Dorothea, cf. 31 So. Car. Hist, and Gen. Mas-, 
107-10. But it should be noted that not all 
commissions to vice-admiralty court judges 
contained such appellate reservations, see the 
December, 1763, commission from Governor 
Dobbs of North Carolina to Thomas McGuire 
(MS North Carolina Commission Book., 
1761-73, 16-17). 
316 Seddon to John Cleveland; Sept. 11, 1751 
(Adm. 1/3676/292). 
317 7 Col. Rec. Ga., 45-46. Cf. the confusion 
of Flippin between the High Court of Admiralty 
and the King in Council (Royal Government 
in Georgia, 1752—1776, 10 Ga. Hist. 
Quart., 270). 
318 The Fabius, 2 C. Robinson, Admiralty 
Reports, 245. The case was that of the Vrouw 
Dorothea, an appeal from a South Carolina 
Vice-Admiralty Court sentence of July 4, 
1748 (see supra n. 314). The objection pressed 
before the High Court of Delegates was that 
the jurisdiction of the Vice-Admiralty over 
revenue cases was not in its nature civil and 
maritime and part of the ordinary jurisdiction 
of the Vice-Admiralty, but was specially given 
by 7 and 8 William 111, c. 22, s. 6 [tic], 
which did not take any notice of the appellate 
jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty 
in such causes. See also 2 Browne, op. cit., 
493-94; Wiener, Notes on the Rhode Island 
Admiralty, 1727-1790, 46 Harvard L. R., 44, 
49; C. P. Daly, History of Court of Common 
Pleas for the City and County of New York, 
1 E. D. Smith Rep. (N.Y.), lxvi (that appeals 
from the vice-admiralty court lay to the High 
Court of Admiralty until about 1770). 
319 Thomas wrote that the governor of St. 
Eustatius had made frequent complaints to 
him of the capture and condemnation of several 
Dutch vessels, bound to the French islands 
with provisions, as being contrary to the treaties 
subsisting between Great Britain and Holland. 
To which the writer had always answered 
mat if the governor thought such vessels unjustly 
condemned, the writer was ready to 
affix the Great Seal to all appeals to His 
Majesty in Council, but that he was not 
authorized to control the judgments of the 
courts of Vice-Admiralty (CO 152/29/ CC 
22).