British vice-admiralty courts in the colonies were important imperial institutions created to extend the reach of English law into seas and oceans beyond the territorial limits of each colony. The first Admiralty Court in Hong Kong operated for only two years in the nineteenth century between 1847 to 1849, and faced many problems which were common amongst other colonial courts of the time, which impeded the territory’s prosecution of piracy cases. The seminar will look at two specific cases to challenge the idea that the Admiralty Court was a useful tool of the empire and projected sovereignty of the colonial state.