Cambridge Library Collection - Naval and Military History: Treatise on Naval Courts Martial

Originally published in 1792, this work was revised (incorporating new material) and corrected for the 1805 edition, reissued here. As a ship's purser and occasional Judge Advocate, Delafons had considerable experience of advising in naval courts martial, including first-hand involvement for the defence in the trial of Peter Heywood, a midshipman on board HMS Bounty during the mutiny of 1789. He intended this work to be a textbook for conducting judicial proceedings in the Royal Navy, and it is also now a fundamental text for historians and researchers in both the legal and naval history of a period of British maritime supremacy. Delafons covers the subjects of jurisdiction, evidence, sentencing, and the roles of individuals within the trial. He also makes a comparison between the law of the Navy and its practical applications and that of the civil courts, and examines the development of the Naval Code itself.

Introductory preface; 1. Of the nature of naval courts martial; 2. Of particular places to which the jurisdiction of naval courts martial extends in regard to offences cognizable by them; and of such, when committed out of those local places or districts; 3. Of courts of inquiry; 4. Of persons subject and amenable to the jurisdiction of naval courts martial; 5. Of officers sitting on courts martial, by virtue of any local rank, superior to their own, established rank, conformably to seniority from the date of their first commission; 6. Of particular situations and circumstances which exempt and exclude officers, who by their seniority of rank are entitled to be members of a court martial; 7. Of a judge advocate; 8. Of arraignment and its incidents; 9. Of the please of which a criminal may avail himself; 10. Of the distinction between principals and accessaries, and the means of bringing offenders to trial; 11. Of evidence and witnesses; 12. Of an equality of voices on matters relative to trials by courts martial; 13. Of giving a verdict or opinion, and passing sentence; 14. Of the form of drawing out the sentence of a court martial; 15. Of appeals; 16. Enumeration of particulars in which courts martial in the land and sea service differ from each other; Appendix.