Dr Edward HarrisWhy should Bermuda’s judiciary and legal profession not celebrate the opening of the legal year as we did traditionally for many years and our Commonwealth counterparts, big and small, continued to do so today.— Chief Justice Ian Kawaley, 18 January 2013On 18 January 2013, a Special Session of Bermuda’s highest judicial body, the Supreme Court, was convened for the purpose of opening the calendar New Year on the Bench, although formally and historically, the legal year opens in September. The occasion was also billed, shall we be so bold so say, as a statement of ‘Judgments on the Old Year’, namely the submission of briefs upon the activites of the various Courts during the calendar year 2012. To those matters and to some of the future spoke the Chief Justice, a Judge of the Magistrate’s Court, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Attorney General and the President of the Bermuda Bar Association, most, surprising for perhaps normally grim advocates, with the occasional flash of humour.The symbolic authority of the Supreme Court was represented by the humourless entity of the ‘Silver Oar’ of Bermuda’s seldom convened Vice-Court of Admiralty, on loan for the occasion from the National Museum. Among the long abiding symbols of regal, parliamentary and legal authority stands the ‘mace’, a symbolic piece of metalwork that takes its origins from the ancient war club, which usually had a flanged or spiked head. With the passage of time, a mace became ‘a staff borne before or by certain officials as a symbol of office’, and so it is with Bermuda’s ‘Silver Oar of the Admiralty Court’. That mace was often carried before the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Bermuda, at the start of the Assizes, which marked the beginning of the court sessions for the year, until the mid-1990s when that ceremony lapsed.Bermuda’s Assizes mace, however, was originally intended for another legal purpose, that of the convening of a Court of Vice Admiralty, which had jurisdiction over matters relating to ships and the sea, particularly in time of war. After 1875, the role of the Admiralty Court at Bermuda was vested in the Supreme Court, which has had but a few reasons to convene for the purpose of a maritime adjudication. Hence the Bermuda Silver Oar has had only an occasional use as a symbol of the ancient authority of the Admiralty, the administrators of the Royal Navy, as such matters were usually dealt with in London courts.The Bermuda Silver Oar is the oldest such mace in existence for British Dependent Territories and former overseas dominions; later examples survive at Colombo, Cape Town, New York and Boston. The London goldsmith, Anthony Nelme, made the Oar in 1697 and on one side of the ‘paddle’ are the arms of William III and a foul anchor. The other side has a ‘scrollwork cartouche having a circular centre’ with the arms and insignia of Colonel Benjamin Bennett, Vice Admiral and Governor of Bermuda, but which insignia were later covered with a plain silver disc. It has been noted that ‘the Oar was sent out as the Mace of the Vice-Admiralty Court, but Governor Bennett who arrived in 1701 to correct lawlessness and a weak administration, used it in the absence of any other token of legal supremacy, and it became the ceremonial mace of the Island Council’.As a symbol, the Oar is thought not to represent a rower’s implement, but rather a steering oar, which was the early form of the rudder, and ‘it has been persuasively suggested that here is the gubernaculum (helm or rudder) of Roman ships, a fitting symbol of right governance’. Such an Oar is the High Court of the Admiralty’s badge of authority and that body dealt with maritime legal matters, including crimes at sea, piracy and the taking of ships as prizes by privateers, shipwrecks, and other claims against ships and their owners. The wrecking of the vessel, Truelove, was the first case to be heard by the Bermuda Court of Vice Admiralty, in the year 1671. As business increased in the late seventeenth century, colonial Courts of Vice Admiralty assisted the Court at London, as hundreds of cases for prizes per year became a norm. After Governor Bennett’s arrival the local Court dealt largely with instances of enemy ships taken in time of war.A lucrative position associated with the Oar and the Court of Vice Admiralty was that of the ‘Prize Agent’, sometimes in the person of the Secretary to the Admiral on the North America and West Indies Station of the Royal Navy, headquartered at the Bermuda Dockyard and Admiralty House in Pembroke Parish. The Prize Agent was responsible for the sale of prize ships and cargoes and for the remitting to the officers and crew of the capturing vessel their shares of the proceeds, such a bonus being one reason why men fought hard and well in maritime engagements.One very successful Prize Agent at Bermuda during the War of 1812 was George Redmond Hulbert, who made a consider fortune from his transactions, but died young in a traffic accident when his carriage overturned outside Portsmouth, England. A descendant, Gevase Hulbert, continues to be associated with the island through his trusteeship relationship with the National Museum. Thomas Moore was another person associated with the Silver Oar, as he was the Registrar of the Court of Vice Admiralty at Bermuda for a period in 1803, but is now remembered chiefly as a great poet and friend of the Bermudian ‘Nea’.Bermuda’s Silver Oar remains an outstanding artifact of the Island’s maritime and legal heritage, now shared between the Supreme Court and the National Museum.As regards some of the remarks made during the Special Session, they are considered sub judice by this writer, as one never knows when one might appear at one’s own session of the Courts, and Judges, like any other mortals, are perhaps not immune to bearing a grudge. So in my usual manner, I cannot insert a ‘sting in the tail’ in today’s tale, as it might come back to bite me, although, Your Honours, like President Bill, I never inhaled, etc., etc.Dr Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Director of the National Museum at Dockyard. Comments may be made to director@bmm.bm or 704-5480.