The third of three Judges to sit in the Commercial Court who were appointed to the Queen's Bench Division within a fortnight of one another in 1897, Arthur Moseley Channell never had as high a public profile as either of the other two, John Bigham and Charles Darling. But his standing with the legal profession was high, and he acquired an admirable reputation as a Judge who was less impulsive and more even-tempered than Bigham, and altogether more competent than Darling. Lord Chief Justice Goddard, who appeared in the Commercial Court in the early 20th Century (and sat there in the 'thirties) remembered him as "one of the most eminent Judges before whom I ever had the good fortune to practise".
Channell was born in London in 1838. Like Walter Phillimore, whose appointment to the Bench followed Channell's by about a month, he was the son of a Judge of the old Courts which had existed before the Judicature Acts of the 1870’s. But whereas Phillimore’s father, Robert, came from a civilian (ie Roman) law background and was the Admiralty Judge, Channell’s father, William, was a common law practitioner who became a Baron (as its Judges were called) of the Exchequer of Pleas, one of the three ancient common law courts (the others being the Common Pleas and the Queen's Bench - or the King's Bench, depending on the monarch). As a Judge, William was regarded as "conscientious, careful, and learned". These were all attributes which his son would inherit. Arthur was the only child of the Baron and his wife Martha (formerly Martha Moseley, hence Arthur's middle name) who survived infancy. He was schooled at Harrow, then went to Trinity College, Cambridge (his father had not gone to university, and it was one of the regrets of his life). A classicist, Channell obtained only a second class degree, but found greater distinction as a rower, winning a number of prizes in University contests and at the Henley Regatta. Deciding to follow his father into the common law, Channell was called to the Bar by Inner Temple in 1863 and joined the South Eastern Circuit. His father helped nurture his powers of legal analysis (and his written skills) by making him sit through his cases and produce first drafts of his judgments.
For the first decade of Arthur's career, any reference in the law reports to "Channell" was almost guaranteed to be to his father, who retired in early 1873 and died soon after. But the younger Channell slowly established a presence of his own. As a common law practitioner in pre-Judicature Act days, he appeared in each of the Common Pleas, the King’s Bench, and his father’s Court, the Exchequer. He even had the occasional outing in the Chancery. William Channell appears generally to have excused himself from Exchequer cases in which his son was involved, although he was one of the Judges in Toleman v Portbury (1870 LR 5 QB 288, in which Arthur appeared with a leader. (That was a case in the Exchequer Chamber which, confusingly, was a different body to the Exchequer of Pleas, although the Barons were members of the Court: it was, in effect an early version of a Court of Appeal.) Channell appeared in a good number of real property cases in the earlier stages of his career as a junior barrister. There were also significant banking, finance, and insolvency elements to his early practice. Channell even appeared in a couple of marine insurance actions, but the commercial litigation staples of shipping, insurance, and international sale of goods never became a mainstay of his practice, although he did once appear as junior counsel in a demurrage action (Kay v Field (1882) 10 QBD 241, an application of the principle that exceptions to demurrage do not protect a charterer who has failed to get the cargo to the loadport.)
This portrait, which was used to illustrate a newspaper piece about Channell’s appointment to the Bench, shows him while still at the Bar.
In fact, the principal area in which Channell ultimately came to specialise was local government litigation. This was mostly dry, technical work, requiring a grasp of a raft of complicated legislation on subjects such as rating, licensing, highways, public health, and building control and planning. There was little call for flashy advocacy in this field, which made it well suited to Channell's understated but studious and analytical nature. The 'Solicitors' Journal' thought that Channell was a "skilful advocate", but that his performances were characterized by "an entire absence of self-assertion".
Channell did not begin to make regular appearances in the law reports until around the mid-1870's, and did not secure his position as a local government specialist for a few years after that. He was forty-seven by the time he became Queen's Counsel in 1885, the same year as William Kennedy, who was eight years younger, but would still beat Channell onto the Bench by four years. Local government litigation remained the core of Channell's practice as a QC. But he broadened his range, stepping back into territory which he had frequented in his earlier days, with relatively regular reported appearances in real property disputes. He also did some employment and insolvency work, and was even instructed in the occasional criminal case.
Channell also appeared in some sale of goods cases in the final stages of his career at the Bar, and in Thames & Mersey Marine Insurance v Pitts [1893] 1 QB 476, he ventured back into marine insurance, with T.G. Carver as his junior (and Joseph Walton as his opponent). In Hill v Scott [1895] 2 QB 371, he even argued a bill of lading case in the Commercial Court before Lord Chief Justice Russell. Walton was his opponent again. Channell won both before Russell and in the Court of Appeal. He was also on the winning side in White v Furness & Withy [1895] AC 40, another bill of lading case, which went to the House of Lords. But the law report indicates that he played no more than a supporting role to Richard Webster QC, a more high-profile practitioner, who was later Attorney-General and then Lord Chief Justice. Channell made a handful of other appearances in the Commercial Court, but was never prominent there.
Channell was made Recorder of Rochester in 1888. This was only a part-time post, but it gave him judicial experience. A full-time position came in November 1897, when he was made a Queen's Bench Judge. He was almost fifty-nine. Charles Darling, who had been appointed the week before, was only forty-seven. In the continuing storm over the transparently political circumstances of Darling's appointment, Channell's arrival on the Bench passed relatively unnoticed. But the legal press thought that he was a "sound" choice. While this might look like a qualified endorsement, it was extravagant praise compared to the abuse directed at Darling. There could certainly be no suggestion of any political element in Channell's selection: he had never stood for Parliament, or otherwise been active in politics. (He had, however, run for office, and been elected, as Vice-Chairman of the Bar for 1896-1897: his elevation to the Bench prevented him from going on to be Chairman for 1898-1899.)
Channell's judicial career was marked by the same characteristics as his time at the Bar: he was quiet and unassuming, but conscientious, thorough, and a good lawyer, with sound judgment. He tried a good number cases in the local government field with which he was so familiar. But he also handled a full range of common law work, from employment to copyright, and from contract to libel, with a sure touch and without drawing attention to himself. He was seldom overturned on appeal. He took his turn in the Court of Criminal Appeal, and tried criminal cases on Circuit, where he proved to be good in jury trials. He was twice selected to resolve polling disputes and other controversies arising out of general elections, a task which necessarily demanded not only even-handedness in fact, but also absolute fairness in appearance. In short, he acquired a reputation as a thoroughly capable and reliable Judge with a versatile all-round ability.
This presumably explains why he was chosen to sit in the Commercial Court even though he had not been a commercial specialist at the Bar. Channell heard a cluster of cases about seaman's wages in the late 1890's, but did not begin trying more genuinely commercial disputes until some time around 1903-1904. This roughly coincided with Gainsford Bruce's retirement, and, like Bruce, Channell seems largely to have been used as back-up when the more regular Commercial Judges were unavailable. But after an intermittent run of reported cases spread out over three or four years, he was made the official Commercial Judge in charge of the Court in 1907, a status which had never been bestowed on Bruce. This briefly broke the stranglehold which Kennedy, Bigham, and Walton between them exerted over the post at that time.
Vanity Fair thought that Channell was “an amiable Judge”. His accessories in the portrait imply that he was also rather old-fashioned.
But Channell largely dropped out of reported Commercial Court cases after his period in charge. (The law reports would suggest that he became something of a criminal specialist instead: a hefty proportion of Channell's reported cases after 1907 were in the Court of Criminal Appeal.) With Bray, Pickford, Hamilton, and Scrutton all joining the King's Bench in the years before 1910, there was less need for support Judges, even with the loss of Kennedy to the Court of Appeal in 1907. However, while Channell’s time as a Commercial Judge was short, he delivered a number of significant judgments which are still cited in modern textbooks: Wehner v Dene [1905] 2 KB 92, on a shipowner's right to intercept charterparty freight; Compania Naviera Vasconzada v Churchill & Sim [1906] 1 KB 237, on how and when statements of fact in a bill of lading become binding on the carrier; and Houlder v Weir [1905] 2 KB 267, on calculation of laytime.
Channell retired in early 1914, when not quite seventy-six. He had served the fifteen year term necessary to earn a full judicial pension, and it was clear that he would advance no further. There was some surprise that he never won promotion to the Court of Appeal, but it was suspected, plausibly enough, that his relatively advanced age on his appointment to the Bench counted against him. Although retired from the judiciary, Channell remained in post as a director of the Legal & General, an office which he had somehow managed to acquire while still a Judge.
Retirement proved less restful than Channell might have anticipated. He was made a Privy Councillor in May 1914. This was a customary award for a retiring High Court Judge (and for serving Court of Appeal Judges, on their promotion). Usually, it was purely honorary, although recipients might expect to be invited to sit on the occasional Privy Council appeal (and Channell was indeed on the panel in a couple of Austrlian tax appeals shortly after his appointment). But, with the outbreak of the Great War, the Privy Council's jurisdiction as the appeal court for Prize cases was unexpectedly revived after more than half a century. Channell found himself recalled to judicial service to sit in well over a hundred reported Prize appeals during and after the War.
Channell in “retirement” in 1916: he sat in over one hundred cases after stepping down from the King’s Bench.
Among the Prize cases in which Channell himself gave the judgment (the Privy Council in its prize jurisdiction retained its customary practice of delivering only a single judgment) was The 'Ophelia' [1916] 2 AC 206, in which he held that a German hospital ship which had sent coded signals about British shipping movement to nearby U-Boats had been properly seized. The case illustrated the peculiarities of the Prize jurisdiction: at a time when the United Kingdom and Germany were engaged in brutal industrialized warfare, Staff Surgeon Pfeiffer of the Imperial German Navy, commander of The 'Ophelia', was permitted to commence proceedings in the High Court seeking the release of his ship, to instruct solicitors and counsel to argue his case, and to call members of his crew to give evidence at trial.
Channell also acted as a Wreck Comissioner during the War, in particular investigating collisions between British and French warships, an assignment which called for tact and diplomacy. His last reported judicial appearance was in a prize case as late as March 1927 (Cargo ex Steamships 'Circassia' (1927) 27 Lloyd's Rep 400), when he was in his late eighties.
A rower in his youth, Channell was a keen yachtsman as an adult. (He came from nautical ancestry: his grandfather had been an officer in Nelson's navy, and had fought at Copenhagen.) He made his home away from London in Falmouth, where he presumably sailed in retirement, when he was not adjudicating in prize cases. He was married twice, and had a total of eight children. His first wife, Beatrice, died young, but Channell and his second wife, Constance, celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1927. Channell died at Falmouth in October 1928.
The German hospital ship/spy-ship ‘Ophelia’ (left), and Arthur Channell’s own vessel, the 28 ton yacht, ‘Xanthe’ (right).