Lloyd's Form and the Montreal Convention

For more than seventy years the 1910 Brussels Convention on Salvage has withstood the test of time. It had bestowed upon it that rare accolade for international conventions, ratification by the United States of America. It might well have gone on to complete its century, had not the steering failed on the Amoco Cadiz in March 1978, whose subsequent grounding and oil pollution made front-page news throughout the world and brought the subject of salvage into sharp focus. The pressure for change in the law of salvage, and the search for solutions to contemporary problems, has evidenced itself in two ways. First, Lloyd's Salvage Agreement has had important additions made to its traditional form. Because of its worldwide use in major salvage cases, Lloyd's Form may fairly be said to have a quasi-convention status. Second, the Comitè Maritime International (CMI), at Montreal in May 1981, produced a new Draft Convention on Salvage. It is with these two instruments of change, and the interaction between them, that this paper is concerned.

Uniformity in Maritime Law: The Domestic Impact of International Maritime Regulation

With as much detachment as he can muster, this writer believes that a new day is dawning for American Proctors. On that day they will cite international conventional and regulatory maritime law as frequently as the domestic substantive maritime law, and courts of admiralty will as frequently decide cases upon that basis. If this prediction sounds farfetched, then recall that statutory maritime law is a comparative novelty. Until some six-score years ago, the general maritime law—which still forms the real substance of our admiralty jurisprudence—was based upon customary international law rather than domestic statute or common law. The greatest of the admiralty judges, Lord Stowell, stated clearly in one decision of 1807 that a court of admiralty is historically a court of international law, which “belongs to other nations as well as to our own; and what foreigners have a right to demand from it, is the administration of the law of nations, simply, and exclusively of the introduction of principles borrowed from our own municipal jurisprudence, to which, it is well known, they have at all times expressed no inconsiderable repugnance.”' Indeed, the application of domestic statutory maritime law (other than port regulations) to foreign merchant shipping is virtually a phenomenon of the 20th century, and the present strong growth of maritime law toward global uniformity based upon international maritime regulation should be seen as a direct reaction to the chaotic diversity of national maritime legislation. It does not matter greatly whether others in the maritime field share this writer's vision of the future; what is important is to grasp the extent to which international maritime regulation is already with us, and to recognize the forces, interests, groups, and organizations forming this rapidly growing body of maritime law.

Conventions on Salvage

By the year 1978, there had been a substantial number of casualties involving large tankers carrying crude oil. Those casualties occurred in many different parts of the world. They raised many legal problems. But more immediately and, perhaps, more importantly, they raised suddenly and without warning many novel practical problems for professional salvors, who were called upon to use their ingenuity to solve those problems. Salvage masters spend their working lives encountering new problems because no two maritime disasters are identical. Salvage masters would not be successful without the knack or aptitude for adaptation. But it was not ingenuity alone that was required when very large tankers were in distress. Resources on a large scale were needed, and they were needed immediately. Tugs, fire-fighting equipment, chemicals for dispersing oil and equipment for containing it, all the paraphernalia of modern salvors, and, above all, financial resources were needed on a very large scale. Such problems affected, or were likely to affect, professional salvors in all parts of the world.  

An Historical Overview of the Development of Uniformity in International Maritime Law

In recent years there have been many efforts at obtaining uniformity of laws in various jurisdictions: the various restatements of law, international conventions, and, where all else fails, bilateral treaties on specific aspects of law such as recognition of judgments. It has long been this writer's theory that such attempts at uniformity became necessary because the rise of nationalism over the centuries destroyed the uniformity of maritime law, which had been established by commercial traders from time immemorial. This paper presents the historical thesis that uniform maritime law: 1. existed in ancient times;

2. developed and grew with the spread of maritime commerce;

3. declined with the growth of nationalism;

4. was revived in the nineteenth century at the instigation of lawyers and commercial men such as those who founded the Comité Maritime International and the national maritime law associations;

5. continues to grow under the aegis of the Intergovernmental Maritime Organization (IMO) and other United Nations affiliated organizations with the cooperation of experts in the private sector.

The Law Enacted March 30, 1982 Establishing the Maritime Court of Panama and Governing its Procedure

A new forum has been created in Panama which has a view toward serving the international maritime community and world commerce. Those who participated in its creation feel a part of that perennial enterprise stretching in time, from the spice trade with the Indies to the carriage of North Slope oil from Alaska. Commerce has always been a means — today, with the proliferation of critical confrontations, it is practically the only means — of coherent and pacific intercourse between nations. Those who play a role in making, interpreting, and enforcing the rules that maintain the viability of such an enterprise are verily manning the ramparts of civilization.  

The Carriage of Goods: Hague, Cogsa, Visby, and Hamburg

The story of pre-Harter Act carriage, leading to the Harter Act, and in turn to the Hague Rules, is so familiar to the practicing admiralty lawyer that it is only with great diffidence and reticence that one approaches it at all. It was first told in 1920 and has been repeated many times since then.Why tell it again? A relatively brief and rather elementary resumé might bring into sharper focus the great difference between the Harter Act-Hague Rules philosophy and the attitudes and philosophy which now are being advanced in certain areas. This review is not intended to be, and is not, a detailed and learned recitation of familiar history; it is no more than a cursory introduction to the current situation surrounding the Visby and Hamburg Rules.