Bottomage

Bottomage (pronounced bot-uh m-ree)

In the marine insurance division of Admiralty law, a contract, of the nature of a mortgage, by which the owner of a ship borrows money to make a voyage, pledging the title of the ship as security.

1615-1625: From Middle English as as an addition to Admiralty law, modelled on the Dutch bodemerij, equivalent to bodem (bottom; hull of a ship) + -erij (–ry).  Bottom is from the Middle English botme & bottom (ground, soil, foundation, lowest or deepest part of anything), from the Old English botm & bodan (bottom, foundation; ground, abyss), from the Proto-Germanic buthm, butmaz & budmaz, from the primitive Indo-European bhudhno (bottom).  It was cognate with Old Frisian boden (soil), the Old Norse botn, the Dutch bodem, the Old High German & German Boden (ground, earth, soil), the Icelandic botn and the Danish bund and was related also to the Irish bonn (sole (of foot)), the Ancient Greek πυθμήν (puthmḗn or pythmen) (bottom of a cup or jar), the Sanskrit बुध्न (budhna) (bottom), the Avestan buna, the Persian بن‎ (bon) (bottom) and the Latin fundus (bottom, piece of land, farm), from which, via French, English gained “fund”. 

The suffix -age is from the Middle English -age, from the Old French -age, from the Latin -āticum.  Cognates include the French -age, the Italian -aggio, the Portuguese -agem, the Spanish -aje & Romanian -aj.  It was used to form nouns (1) with the sense of collection or appurtenance, (2) indicating a process, action, or a result, (3) of a state or relationship, (4) indicating a place, (5) indicating a charge, toll, or fee, (6) indicating a rate & (7) of a unit of measure.

The sense “posterior of a person (the sitting part)” is from 1794; the “verb to reach the bottom of” from 1808 and the expression “bottom dollar (the last dollar one has) is from 1857.  The meaning "fundamental character or essence" is from the 1570s and the variation “to get to the bottom of some matter” is from 1773; “bottoms up” as the call to finish one's drink is from 1875 while to do or feel something from “the bottom of (one's) heart” is from 1540s.  The bottom-feeder, originally a technical term in the classification of fishes, dates from 1866, the figurative sense ("one of the lowest status or rank" or an "opportunist who seeks quick profit usually at the expense of others or from their misfortune") noted from 1919.

On the bottom.

Bottomage (sometimes referred to as bottomry), is a financing arrangement in maritime law whereby the owner or master of a ship borrows money “upon the bottom (or keel) of it” with an agreement to forfeit the ship itself to the creditor if the loan and interest is not paid at the time nominated, after the ship's safe return.  The contracts tended to be executed when a ship in a foreign port needed emergency repairs and it wasn’t possible to arrange funds in other ways.  Now rare because developments in maritime law discounted the bottomage bond's priority as against other liens and improvements in communications made international money transfers more efficient.  Hardly used since the nineteenth century and now of only historic interest.

It was an unusual, hybrid form of financing and one almost wholly peculiar to the pre-modern sea-trade.  It wasn’t a conventional loan because the lender accepted part of the risk, ships sinking not infrequently.  Nor was it insurance because there was nothing which explicitly secured the risk to the merchant's goods.  Bottomage can be thought of as a type of futures contract in that the insurer has purchased an option on the venture's final profit.  The risk being greater, a bottomage bond giving no remedy to the lender against the owners of the ship or cargo personally, rates were always much higher than the historic trading average of around 12%.

Doctors' Commons (1808), the High Court of Admiralty in session, Designed and etched by Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) & Auguste Charles Pugin (1768–1832 London), aquatint by John Bluck (1791–1832), Lambeth Palace Library collection, London.

The Admiralty Court in England dates from the mid- fourteenth century and its creation appears linked to the victory of Edward III’s (1312–1377; King of England 1327-1377) fleet in the battle of Sluys in 1340, one of the opening engagements of the Hundred Years' War (1737-1453).  A specialist tribunal which appears to have been charged with keeping peace at sea and dealing with piracy, as the High Court of Admiralty it developed its own distinct procedures and practices and was attended by a specialist group of solicitors (called proctors), its advocates educated in civil rather than common law; those trained only in common law not permitted to appear.

Bottamage re-imagined, Lindsay Lohan at the beach.

The advocates of the Admiralty Court were all Doctors of Law and were variously described as belonging to the College of Advocates, the College of Civilians or the Society of Doctors' Commons and specialized in ecclesiastical and civil law.  They were admitted to practice by the Dean of Arches who served the Archbishop of Canterbury and, practicing from Doctors’ Commons, cluster of buildings on Knightrider Street between St Paul’s cathedral and the north bank of the Thames they were most concerned with Admiralty and Church law although the advocates also verified and stored documents such as wills and marriage and divorce certificates.  The Doctors’ Commons was unusual in that while it resembled a modern Inn of Court in that it housed a library, a dining hall and rooms from which lawyers practiced, it also contained a court-room where the Admiralty Judge sat.  The arrangement persisted until the reforms of the Victorian Judicature Acts (1873-1875), the College of Advocates abolished in 1865 and the High Court of Admiralty transferred to became part of the unified High Court in 1875 although the tradition of a specialist Admiralty Judge and a specialist Admiralty Bar continues to this day.

The symbol of the Admiralty Court is the Admiralty Oar, traditionally displayed in court when a trial is in progress.

After the passage of the Judicature Acts, Admiralty jurisdiction moved to the newly created division of Divorce, Probate and Admiralty, referred to within the profession as the 3W (wives, wills & wrecks) and this lasted until the 1970 Administration of Justice Act which shifted divorce to the Family Division and probate to Chancery.  The Admiralty Court became part of the Queen’s Bench Division and claims are now dealt with by one of its two judges: the Admiralty Judge and the Admiralty Registrar, the arrest and release of ships handled by the Admiralty Marshal.