Judicial Sale of Ships
The court-ordered sale that extinguishes liens and mortgages, the fund it creates, and the Beijing Convention scheme for recognising clean title abroad.
A judicial sale is the sale of a ship ordered or approved by a court, normally following arrest, and it is the only sale that gives a buyer title free of the maritime liens and mortgages that attached before it. A private sale does not: a lien attaches to the hull by operation of law and follows it into new ownership, which is why an arrested ship sold by the court fetches more than the same ship sold privately under a cloud.
The proceeds become a fund, and the claims that were extinguished attach to it in their priorities. Article 12(2) of the International Convention on Maritime Liens and Mortgages, 1993 pays arrest and sale costs first, including upkeep and crew wages accrued from the time of arrest, and Article 12(5) obliges the registrar to delete the mortgages on production of the court’s certificate.
Cross-border recognition was the weak point until recently. The United Nations Convention on the International Effects of Judicial Sales of Ships, adopted on 7 December 2022 by General Assembly resolution 77/100 and in force since 17 February 2026, requires a registry in another state party to delete pre-sale encumbrances on production of the certificate of judicial sale, and requires a court to release a ship arrested for a pre-sale claim.
The full article will cover the sale procedure, valuation and reserve, the ranking of claims against the fund, the certificate under Article 5, the public-policy exception, and the temporal limit in Article 21(3).