Vice-admiralty courts spread through crown colonies from 1696 onward and tried cases without juries.

Evidence

In the eighteenth century, the court systems become somewhat more complicated. Two types of court, vice-​admiralty and chancery, call for special comment. In England, courts of admiralty dealt with maritime matters: questions of prize law, seamen’s wages, salvage, and ocean commerce. These courts did not exist as such in the seventeenth-​century colonies. In crown colonies, the governor was ex officio vice-​admiral; beginning in 1696, he had the power to “erect one or more Court or Courts Admirall” in his jurisdiction. By 1763, nine separate vice-​admiralty courts had been set up in the American colonies. Some were quite busy and active. They were mostly staffed by native judges. The courts followed traditional English admiralty procedure, which meant, among other things, that cases were tried without juries. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 242