The law provides maritime claimants with unique ways to enforce their claims. These tools are admiralty remedies, as they are only available in connection with admiralty claims. The aim is to facilitate the enforcement of maritime claims, taking into account the specificities of the shipping business and the difficulties faced by maritime claimants.

These remedies developed historically, and in common law countries, they are exercised within a separate admiralty jurisdiction. They are available in civil law countries within ordinary commercial jurisdiction primarily due to the widely accepted international instruments, including the (Brussels) International Convention on the Arrest of Sea-Going Ships (1952), and the International Convention on Maritime Liens and Mortgages (1993).

These remedies include an action in rem, a maritime lien, a judicial sale of ships, and, depending on jurisdiction, a separate attachment procedure. These tools provide a maritime claimant with additional security and jurisdiction when it cannot be established otherwise. Even though these remedies should allow a maritime claimant to enforce its claim when it would be much more challenging to do so in another way, they constitute severe interference with the third parties’ rights, especially those who are non-maritime claimants of the relevant debtor.

This interference and the maritime claimant’s strengthened position must be justified. The research examines the potential justifications for admiralty remedies and assesses whether these justifications remain relevant in modern times. It addresses the issue from the current development of law, rather than from the historical perspective of the emergence of relevant remedies and separate admiralty jurisdiction in common law countries. The research focuses on common law, particularly Singapore’s practice for enforcing maritime claims. However, the civil law is used as an example of the jurisdictions where admiralty remedies are exercised, but not within a separate admiralty jurisdiction. The underlying research question is whether there is a future for distinctively admiralty remedies.