The maritime lien is a unique feature of the maritime law: an incumbrance which attaches to a ship by operation of law, independent of any document, which is incapable of registration, takes priority over a registered mortgage, and follows the ship into the hands even of a bona fide purchaser for value without notice. Despite the word lien, which to an English lawyer generally means a right to retain possession, a maritime lien (better expressed by the French phrase “privilege maritime”) does not involve physical possession of the ship herself.

Professor William Tetley, well known to all members of the Comité Maritime International as a distinguished representative of his country, is Professor of Law at McGill University, Montreal. As such, he has a unique spread of experience of the influences of both the English and Napoleonic systems of law, the first through the common law inherited by the Dominion of Canada when it achieved independence (as with the United States, its giant neighbour to the south) and also through the French tradition and civil law which the province of Quebec inherited from its French ancestors.

In this interesting work, Professor Tetley seeks to analyse the main principles applicable to maritime liens and other claims in rem, comparing in turn the approach adopted to each principle by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France.

He works systematically through the traditional claims which give rise to a maritime lien, while adding to this list a category of his own labelling—“special legislative rights”. These are claims which do not fall strictly within the concept of the internationally recognized maritime lien, but in respect of which maritime states generally have conferred upon themselves rights equivalent to such a lien, namely for dock harbour and canal charges, wreck removal and pollution.

The book goes on to deal with mortgages, contract liens (including the much debated position of necessaries men and ship repairers), liens on cargo and the practical significance of all recognized liens in the event of arrest, and ultimate judicial sale, of the vessel in question.

The final section of the book contains summaries written by leading maritime lawyers in 35 different countries as to the principal lines of approach in each country—a useful list of the maritime liens recognized by each jurisdiction, the order of ranking of those liens, the basic requirements for an enforceable ship mortgage, and the approach adopted in that country to questions of conflict of laws. The appendix contains the 1926 and 1967 Inter-