ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the benefits of the admiralty enforcement process in England and other common law jurisdictions and the extent to which these may have been somewhat eroded by recent developments in the law and by the increasing use of insolvency proceedings by shipowners in financial difficulties. Ship mortgage enforcement is, for any lender, an option of last resort. Whilst evolving court procedures and ever higher court fees may offer ever fewer incentives to mortgagees to avail themselves of Admiralty procedures for ship mortgage enforcement, the greatest encroachment upon such procedures in recent years has undoubtedly been the trend towards the use of international insolvency regimes. If the owner does resist, and the mortgagee find itself having to arrest a vessel to recover possession, then the time advantages offered by these self-help remedies will quickly be lost and the mortgagee may simply find itself embroiled in litigation in an unfavourable foreign jurisdiction.
