Law of Ship Mortgages
1
Page 1
Historical introduction
Page 1
1.1 Background
1.1.1 Coote on Mortgages1 said of ship mortgages: ‘No species of mortgage security requires greater circumspection than that we are about to consider.’ The risks of lending against the security of ships were noted in a nineteenth-century Scottish case:2
the mortgagee of a ship holds a security over a floating subject which in the very act of use is liable to be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the courts of the country in which the right of the mortgagee is constituted, and which also in the act of use is exposed to the perils of the sea.