When the Chief Justice accepted the presentation of
an oar mace of Admiralty by members of the New South
Wales judiciary and legal profession in Sydney on 6 October
1994, the Federal Court joined other courts with similar
symbols of the jurisdiction in New South Wales, New York,
Massachusetts, Canada, Calcutta, Sri Lanka and Bermuda.
A second Federal Court Southern Ocean Oar Mace was presented
to the Court by the Maritime Law Association of Australia
and New Zealand in Melbourne in a ceremonial sitting
on 29 October 1999. A third oar mace was also presented to the Court by the Maritime Law Association of Australia and New Zealand in a ceremonial sitting in Brisbane on 6 September 2006 to honour the memory of the late Justice Richard Cooper of this Court.
The Admiralty mace is derived from maces used in battle
in England from the twelfth century. The oar mace of
the English Admiralty Court was first mentioned in a
letter describing Court proceedings in 1459. The first
representation of the mace can be found on the tomb of
Doctor Lewis, an Admiralty Judge in the sixteenth century.
The design of the Federal Court oar maces of Admiralty
are based on the silver oar of the High Court of Admiralty
of England and bear the foul anchor that has been the
seal of the Lord High Admiral since the sixteenth century.
The Federal Court maces are the first ever to bear the
arms of Australia, thus signifying the sovereign source
of admiralty jurisdiction in Australia today, and the
jurisdiction of the Court in admiralty.
The oar mace figures in seventeenth
century accounts of trials for piracy and murder, and
it was established practice to carry the oar at executions
ordered at Admiralty sessions, including the execution
of the pirate Captain William Kidd in 1701.
The stand for the Federal Court
mace has a history of its own. It is made of timber from
the HMAS Brisbane, the first navy cruiser to be built
in Australia. The Brisbane carried out patrol duties in
the Indian Ocean during World War I, later patrolling
the Pacific Islands following the reported presence of
a German raider in September 1917. After World War I she
served with the Royal Navy's China Squadron in 1925 and
was the first RAN ship to visit Japan. She was finally
decommissioned in September 1935 and broken up in 1936.
