Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
BOOK REVIEW - MORTGAGES OF SHIPS
MORTGAGES OF SHIPS: Marine Security in Canada by J. D. Buchan, B.A., LL.B., M.Sc., of the Bar of British Columbia. Butterworths, Toronto and Vancouver (1986, xxi and 125 pp., plus 108 pp. Appendices and 3 pp. Index). Hardback £64.
This book, as its title indicates, deals with the law of ships’ mortgages in Canada and is intended as a handbook for practitioners and students. In the preface, Mr Buchan refers to Mr Constant’s The Law relating to the Mortgage of Ships (1920) as an excellent work and, indeed, this is probably the only, even if somewhat out of date, textbook of its type on the subject of ships’ mortgages in English law. Mr Buchan to an extent follows Mr Constant’s approach to the subject in his book.
Mr Buchan’s book is of course dealing with mortgages on ships in Canada; but, since the Canada Shipping Act of 1952 in many respects follows the Imperial Merchant Shipping Act of 1894, much of his book is equally applicable to England and indeed most of the cases cited are English decisions. The position in Canada is made more complicated, at least for an English lawyer, by the various provincial statutes requiring the registration of certain security documents in provincial registries, and it would have been an advantage if this subject could have been considered in more detail.
In Chapter 1, the author introduces the subject and in Chapter 2 deals with the formalities and requirements of the registration of ships. It is interesting to note that the Canada Shipping Act provides for the registration of ships under construction, because at present there is no equivalent provision in the United Kingdom legislation. Chapter 3 deals with the security
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