The Dockyards etc. Protection Act 1772 was passed in order to protect Royal Navy ships, dockyards, and stores from damage. At the time, ships were built of flammable oak wood and tar, and the naval yards were full of these supplies. Punishment for violating the act was a death sentence. The first section created the offence of arson in the royal dockyards by making it an offence to burn or destroy Royal Navy ships, stores, or ammunition under penalty of death anywhere in the British Empire. The Act also provided that benefit of clergy was not an available defence for the crime. The second section also stated that offenders could be tried if the offence occurred anywhere outside of the realm. The act put a version of arson in statute law for the first time, as all arson previously had been under common law. Though Scotland had its own similar offence of wilful fire raising. At the time of the Act's passage, the death penalty was common; at the turn of the 19th century, 220 offences carried the death penalty. In 1861, Parliament passed the Offences against the Person Act 1861, as part of a series of criminal law consolidation acts, which sharply limited the death penalty to only five civilian crimes: arson in royal dockyards, murder, treason, espionage, and piracy with violence.
Only one prosecution was brought under the Act. In that case, the Scottish saboteur John the Painter was prosecuted and executed in 1777 for setting the rope house at Portsmouth Royal Dockyard on fire. He was hanged from the mizzenmast of the frigate, the highest gallows erected in British history, with the frigate moored at Portsmouth Royal Dockyards in view of the damage he had caused. A crowd of 20,000 gathered to witness the hanging.
Repeal
The death penalty for murder was abolished in 1969, leaving the provisions of the Dockyards etc. Protection Act 1772 as one of the few crimes that retained the death penalty. In 1970, the Law Commission proposed that the crime of arson in royal dockyards be abolished in its draft Criminal Damage Bill as part of an update of the law on criminal damage. The reasoning was that the law was no longer required for its original purposes, as warships were no longer made of flammable materials. The resulting Criminal Damage Act received royal assent from Queen Elizabeth II in 1971 and the offence of arson in royal dockyards was abolished. In a speech in the House of Lords in 1998, Lord Goodhart stated that the dockyard arson offence disappeared from the list of capital crimes in 1971 "without, so far as I am aware, either comment or concern." The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998 abolished the death penalty for all remaining crimes. Despite abolition in the United Kingdom, a 2004 episode of the comedy quiz show QI asserted that it is still popularly and erroneously believed that arson in royal dockyards continues to exist as a capital offence. Though similar crimes have occurred since abolition, they are now dealt with under general laws relating to arson.
Applicability outside of the United Kingdom
A 1975 report for the Australian state of Victoria found that the Dockyards etc. Protection Act 1772 was still apparently in force, as the sections of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 that repealed the Dockyards Act explicitly applied only to the United Kingdom. However, the offence of arson in royal dockyards is considered obsolete in Victoria, as the provisions have been superseded by the Victorian Crimes Act 1958 and the Commonwealth Crimes Act 1914–1973. New South Wales also retained it, as it was viewed as being ultra vires for the Parliament of New South Wales to amend it. The British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar had the act incorporated into its law in the English Law Act 1962. Thus, the offence was retained in Gibraltarian law; however, section two was repealed in 1972. Until 2007, the act remained on the statute books in the Republic of Ireland, as British statutes formed a part of Irish law following the Kingdom of Ireland's absorption into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. It was fully repealed under schedules two and three of the Irish Statute Law Revision Act 2007.
