Maritime law

Alternative Titles: admiralty, admiralty law


In English-speaking countries, “admiralty” is sometimes used synonymously, but in a strict sense the term refers to the jurisdiction and procedural law of courts whose origins may be traced to the office of Admiral. Although etymologically maritime law and “law of the sea” are identical, the former term is generally applied to private shipping law, whereas the latter, usually prefixed by “international,” has come to signify the maritime segment of public international law. The Convention on the Law of the Sea, on the other hand, is a UN agreement regarding territorial waters, sea lanes, and ocean resources. The Convention was originally signed by 119 nations on Dec. 10, 1982.

Historical development

From the fact that the ancient Egyptians engaged in shipping on a wide scale, it can be inferred that they had at least rudimentary laws regulating that activity, although no trace of any has been found thus far. Nor is there anything known of any maritime laws of the Phoenicians, who succeeded the Egyptians as commercial leaders in the Mediterranean. That Rhodes was a major source of maritime law, however, is clearly indicated in two passages from the Digest (ad 533) of the Roman emperor Justinian. The first quotes the emperor Antoninus (reigned ad 138–161) in a case of plunder following a shipwreck: “I am indeed lord of the world, but the Law is the lord of the sea. This matter must be decided by the maritime law of the Rhodians, provided that no law of ours is opposed to it.” The second is a statement of the basic law of “general average,” which the Digest attributes to the Rhodians. “Average” here means any loss sustained by a vessel or its cargo. When one segment of a maritime venture is sacrificed to save the others, the average is described as general, and the owners of the property saved must help make good the loss. Thus, if cargo is jettisoned in a successful effort to refloat a grounded vessel, the owners of the vessel and of the cargo saved are obliged to bear proportionate shares of the loss sustained by the owner of the cargo singled out for sacrifice.

    Alinari—Giraudon/Art Resource, New York

Rome did not become a maritime power until the Punic wars of the 3rd century bc. From the fact that the Romans were allies of the Rhodians and from the references in the Digest, it is logical to assume that Roman maritime law borrowed heavily from that of Rhodes. Acknowledging Rhodes as the birthplace of maritime jurisprudence, the maritime code of the later Eastern Empire, dating from the 7th or 8th century ad, was called the “Rhodian Sea Law.”

Because the Mediterranean, under Roman control, was not only the centre of the Western world but also its principal commercial highway, European maritime law evolved as a uniform, supranational, comprehensive body of law—a characteristic which, though sometimes threatened by the spread of nationalism, has never been lost completely. The barbarian invaders who moved south were not seafarers, and the principal Mediterranean seaports were thus able to maintain their independence. Moreover, the conquered peoples were permitted to keep the Roman law to which they had become accustomed, and in the field of maritime jurisprudence the transition into the Middle Ages was therefore gradual. As certain Italian cities began to outstrip the Eastern Byzantine Empire commercially, they formulated their own maritime laws, some dating as early as 1063. Trani, Amalfi, Venice, and other Italian port cities all offered their own collections of laws. Nevertheless, the next widely accepted body of sea laws was the Consolat de Mar, or “Consulate of the Sea,” originally compiled at Barcelona in the 13th century. More elaborate than the earlier codes, the Consolat was followed in Spain, Provence, and the Italian cities and had a significant effect on the development of modern maritime law.

The earliest code to emerge beyond the Mediterranean was the “Rolls of Oléron,” named for an island in the Bay of Biscay and apparently dating from the 12th century. Whether the Rolls were of French or of Anglo-Norman origin, they became the nucleus of the maritime law not only of England and France but also of Scotland, Flanders, Prussia, and Castile; and they are still occasionally cited as authority, even by U.S. courts. The Rolls were closely followed in the Laws of Wisby, headquarters of the Hanseatic League until 1361.

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In continental Europe, loss of uniformity in the maritime law began with the late Renaissance and accelerated with the rise of nationalism in the 17th century, which witnessed adoption of the Maritime Code of Christian XI of Sweden (1667), the Marine Ordinances of Louis XIV of France (1681), and the Code of Christian V of Denmark (1683). Of these, the most significant were the Ordinances, prepared under Louis XIV’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, as part of his comprehensive though unfulfilled plan for the codification of all French law. Established customs of the sea, revised to suit the times, were made part of the national law, enforceable in the French Admiralty Court, which was granted maritime jurisdiction to the exclusion of the old consular courts, whose judges had been elected by the mariners themselves.

The individuality of the maritime law—its “separation” from other types of law—was accentuated by the Ordinances, which gathered together in one code all of the criminal, private, procedural, and public laws relating to the sea. Although the French Admiralty Court failed to survive the Revolution that began in 1789, the substantive law embodied in the Ordinances was very closely followed in the Code de Commerce, whose adoption in 1807 meant that the maritime law was thereafter considered simply as a branch of commercial law, with consequent diminution of the weight previously given to custom and usage. Furthermore, abolition of the Admiralty Court resulted in the trial of maritime cases by the commercial courts, on which, in the smaller ports, maritime interests might not be represented. In countries with codes based directly or indirectly on the French commercial code, civil maritime cases, as well as nonmaritime commercial disputes, are heard and decided by commercial courts.

Although the Code de Commerce was widely adopted in the first half of the 19th century, in some cases by choice and in others by conquest, the German Commercial Code of 1861, revised in 1897, marked a departure from French law, and revisions of the Spanish and Italian codes showed the influence of the new German law. These, in turn, had their effect in countries under Italian and Spanish influence.

Although the “Pied Poudre” courts, held primarily for the settlement of disputes at English fairs and markets, also had special jurisdiction of seamen’s cases, it is probable that the first English tribunals to apply maritime law, with the Rolls of Oléron as a basis, were the courts of the Cinque Ports. The High Court of Admiralty, which sat at London, and the Vice Admiralty Courts, set up in the other ports, were a later development. They were named after the admiral, an officer whose duties were at first solely administrative and military but were broadened early in the 14th century to include disciplinary proceedings in such matters as piracy. The Admiralty Court is considered as dating from 1360, when for the first time the admiral was expressly granted jurisdiction in civil maritime cases. By the end of the 16th century the admiralty courts had come to exercise an extremely wide jurisdiction, reaching far beyond saltwater transportation into many areas of commercial law. But during the first half of the 17th century, the judges of the common-law courts succeeded in divesting their competitors in the Admiralty of their commercial jurisdiction and in restricting them to the adjudication of “things done upon the sea.”

The Admiralty was a royal court with valuable emoluments. It functioned without the aid of juries, following procedures borrowed from the Continent that were somewhat less dilatory and cumbersome than those of the common-law courts, and applied the laws and customs of the sea to the maritime controversies that came before it. For these reasons it was preferred by the merchants and favoured by the Crown, which depended to a considerable extent on taxation of the merchants for its revenues. Its jurisdiction therefore waxed and waned with the strength or weakness of the reigning sovereign. Thus, it enjoyed wide jurisdiction under the Tudors, but its powers were severely curtailed under succeeding monarchs and governments, and were never fully restored until the passage of the first of the Admiralty Court Acts in the 19th century.

Although the powers of the English Admiralty are today quite broad, in practice it is rare for cases other than those involving marine collisions and salvage to be brought before it. Controversies respecting charter parties, ocean bills of lading, and marine insurance, for example, are more generally brought before the Commercial Court.

In the United States, the federal district courts are by statute granted original jurisdiction, “exclusive of the courts of the States,” of “Any civil case of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction, saving to suitors in all cases all other remedies to which they are otherwise entitled.” This means, essentially, that if a maritime claimant wishes to have his claim litigated in accordance with admiralty procedure he must invoke the admiralty jurisdiction of the district courts. However, he is free to sue in a state court, unless the defendant is a citizen of another state, in which case the suit may be tried as an ordinary civil action in the district court.

Components of maritime law

Maritime liens

Although admiralty actions are frequently brought in personam, against individual or corporate defendants only, the most distinctive feature of admiralty practice is the proceeding in rem, against maritime property, that is, a vessel, a cargo, or “freight,” which in shipping means the compensation to which a carrier is entitled for the carriage of cargo.

Under American maritime law, the ship is personified to the extent that it may sometimes be held responsible under circumstances in which the shipowner himself is under no liability. The classic example of personification is the “compulsory pilotage” case. Some state statutes impose a penalty on a shipowner whose vessel fails to take a pilot when entering or leaving the waters of the state. Since the pilotage is thus compulsory, the pilot’s negligence is not imputed to the shipowner. Nevertheless, the vessel itself is charged with the pilot’s fault and is immediately impressed with an inchoate maritime lien that is enforceable in court.

Maritime liens can arise not only when the personified ship is charged with a maritime tort, such as a negligent collision or personal injury, but also for salvage services, for general average contributions, and for breach of certain maritime contracts.

In a proceeding in rem, the vessel, cargo, or freight can be arrested and kept in the custody of the court unless the owner obtains its release by posting a bond or such other security as may be required under the applicable law or as may be acceptable to the plaintiff. More frequently, however, the owner will post security to avoid a threatened arrest, and the property never has to be taken into custody. When the judgment is for the plaintiff in a proceeding in rem, there will be a recovery on the bond or other security if the owner of the property does not pay; or, if security has not been posted, the court will order the property sold, or the freight released, in order to satisfy the judgment. The sale of a ship by an admiralty court following a judgment in rem divests the ship of all pre-existing liens—and not merely those liens sought to be enforced in the proceeding in rem. By way of contrast, the holder of an in personam judgment against a shipowner can, like any judgment creditor, have the ship sold in execution of the judgment; but such a sale, unlike the sale under an admiralty judgment in rem, does not divest existing liens; the purchaser at the execution sale takes the ship subject to all such liens. Thus, an in rem proceeding has decided advantages over a proceeding in personam in a case in which the shipowner is insolvent.

Efforts have been made from time to time to increase the security value of ship mortgages, in order to encourage lending institutions to finance vessel construction, but these efforts have not been very successful, largely because of differences in national laws respecting the relative priorities of mortgages and maritime liens. (Under general maritime law there is a complex hierarchy of maritime liens; that is to say, in a proceeding that involves distribution of an inadequate fund to a number of lien claimants, liens of a higher rank will be paid in full in priority over liens of a lower rank; and in most countries a ship mortgage ranks lower than a number of maritime liens.) Attempts were made to harmonize some of these conflicts by international conventions signed in 1926 and 1976, but the first failed to win widespread support and, as of the end of 1983, the second had been ratified by only half of the signatories required for the convention to enter into force.

Shipping charters

The function of ships, other than warships, pleasure craft, and service vessels of various types is of course transportation of cargoes and passengers. In the “jet age” the passenger-carrying segment of the shipping industry has lost much of its former importance, but the quantity of goods transported by water continues to grow as the world economy expands.

The great majority of the contracts governing the carriage of goods by water are evidenced either by charter parties or by bills of lading. The term charter party (a corruption of the Latin carta partita, or “divided charter”) is employed to describe three widely differing types of contracts relating to the use of vessels owned or controlled by others. Under a “demise” or “bareboat” charter, the shipowner delivers possession of the vessel to the charterer, who engages the master and crew, arranges for repairs and supplies, and, in general, functions in much the same way as an owner during the term of the charter. A much more common arrangement is the “time” charter, whereunder the shipowner employs the master and crew and the charterer simply acquires the right, within specified limits, to direct the movements of the vessel and determine what cargoes are to be carried during the charter period. Under both demise and time charters, the charterer pays charter hire for the use of the vessel at a specified daily or monthly rate.

The third type is the “voyage” charter, which is essentially a contract of affreightment, or carriage. Most voyage charters provide for the carriage of full cargoes on one voyage or a series of voyages, but occasionally a charterer contracts for the use of only a portion of the carrying capacity of the vessel, in which case the governing contract is described as a “space” charter. Under a voyage charter, it is customary for the master or his agent to issue a bill of lading to the shipper, who is usually the charterer, although as between shipowner and charterer the voyage charter remains the governing contract of carriage; the bill of lading serves only as a receipt and as a document of title to the goods. Ocean bills of lading are usually in order form; that is, they call for delivery to the order of the shipper or of some other designated party. Such a bill of lading may be negotiated in much the same way as a check, draft, or other negotiable instrument, which means that a bona fide purchaser of the bill of lading takes it free and clear of any defects not appearing on its face. Thus, if cargo is externally damaged on shipment but the damage is not noted on the bill of lading, the carrier will be barred from establishing that the cargo was in fact damaged before it came into the carrier’s custody. Once a bill of lading issued under a voyage charter is negotiated to a bona fide purchaser, it becomes the governing contract between the carrier and the holder of the bill.

When a ship strands or collides with another vessel, substantial cargo loss or damage may result. If the casualty is found to have been caused by a sea peril or an error in navigation, there will be no liability if the goods are being carried under a statutory or contractual provision based upon the Brussels Convention on Limitation of Liability (1923), which incorporated the so-called “Hague Rules.” If, however, the casualty was the result of the carrier’s failure to exercise due diligence to make the ship seaworthy and to see that it was properly manned, equipped, and supplied, the carrier will be held responsible.

Limitation of liability

A distinctive feature of maritime law is the privilege accorded to a shipowner and certain other persons (such as charterers in some instances) to limit the amount of their liability, under certain circumstances, in respect of tort and some contract claims. In some countries, including the United States, the limit, except as to claims for personal injury and wrongful death, is the value of the ship and the earnings of the voyage on which it was engaged at the time of the casualty. On the other hand, in the United Kingdom and the other countries that have ratified the Brussels limitation of liability convention of 1957 or enacted domestic legislation embracing its terms, the limit is £28, or its equivalent, multiplied by the adjusted net tonnage of the vessel, regardless of its actual value. The basic condition of the privilege is that the party asserting it must be free from “privity or knowledge,” in the words of the United States statute, or “actual fault or privity,” in the words of the convention. This formula means, generally speaking, that the shipowner is entitled to limit his liability for the negligence of the master or crew, but not for his own personal negligence or that of his managerial personnel. In a sense the limited liability of shipowners may be compared to the limited liability that any investor may now achieve by incorporating his enterprise. The limited-liability idea in maritime law, however, long antedates the emergence or invention of the modern corporation or limited company; its early appearance in maritime law may be taken as a recognition of the extraordinary hazards of seaborne commerce and the need to protect the adventurous shipowner from the crushing burden of liability—that is, in the days before even the most primitive forms of insurance had become available. Some modern commentators have suggested that the peculiar features of maritime limitation of liability have outlived their usefulness, and that the development of insurance and of the modern limited-liability company has radically altered the conditions out of which the shipowners’ privilege originally grew. Although no maritime country has yet gone to the length of abolishing limitation of liability, shipowning interests appear to have become concerned about the possibility of such a development.

In most maritime countries the principle of limitation of liability was considered to be a part of the general maritime law. As it developed in continental Europe, the idea, generally stated, was that a shipowner entitled to limitation could satisfy his liability by abandoning the ship (and its pending freight) to claimants. Since the privilege of limitation was, and is, typically invoked following a large-scale maritime disaster, the abandonment theory meant that claimants got the value of the ship as it was following the disaster. If the ship had sunk or was a total loss with no freight pending, the claimants got nothing. This theory was carried over into the law of many South American countries.

Great Britain and the United States were once the only maritime countries that refused to admit the principle of limitation as part of the general maritime law. In both countries, however, the competitive needs of the shipping industry compelled its introduction by statute.

In general, the limitation law of any country will be applied by its own courts in favour of foreign shipowners as well as of citizens. From the point of view of shipowning interests, however, a major weakness of limitation law has been the fact that limitation proceedings were not given international recognition. That has meant that a shipowner whose ships moved in international trade could find himself sued in several countries as a result of one disaster and forced to set up limitation funds in each country. The Brussels convention of 1957 makes limitation decrees delivered by admiralty courts in ratifying countries internationally effective; that is, a shipowner is required to set up only one limitation fund, out of which all claims are paid, no matter in how many countries proceedings might be instituted against him. Thus, the convention, which increases the liability of shipowners in most countries, does offer in return this considerable advantage to shipowners.

Collision liability

Under maritime law responsibility for collision damage is based upon the fault principle: a colliding vessel will not be held responsible for damage to another ship or to a fixed object such as a bridge, wharf, or jetty unless the collision is caused by a deficiency in the colliding vessel or by negligence or a willful act on the part of its navigators. It is not always necessary, however, to establish fault by positive evidence; there is a presumption of fault when a moving vessel collides with a fixed object or with another vessel that is properly moored or anchored, and the burden of proving freedom from fault will lie with the moving vessel.

In countries that have adopted the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to Collisions between Vessels, signed at Brussels in 1910, the rule of “comparative negligence” governs: if each of two colliding vessels is to blame, the total damages will be divided between their owners or operators in proportion to the respective degrees of fault. In certain countries that have not ratified the Convention, such as the United States, the law is such that, if both vessels are to blame, the total damages are equally divided, regardless of the respective degrees of fault. In certain other countries that have not ratified the Convention, including most of the Latin American states, the principle of “contributory fault” governs: if both vessels are to blame, each owner or operator bears his own damages.

Salvage and general average

Salvage and general average are doctrines peculiar to maritime law. Under the law of salvage, strangers to the maritime venture who succeed in saving maritime property from loss or damage from perils of the sea or other waters are entitled to an award for their efforts and have a maritime lien on the salvaged property therefor. Several elements will be taken into account in fixing the amount of the award, including the extent of the efforts required; the skill and energy displayed by the salvors, the amounts involved, including both the value of the vessel or other property employed by the salvors in rendering the service and the value of the vessel, cargo, or other property salvaged; the risks incurred by the salvors; and the degree of danger from which the property was rescued. General average (defined at the beginning of this article) is a principle still universally accepted, although there is some agitation for its abolition, principally because the accounting and other expenses incurred in administering a general average are often quite out of proportion to the amounts involved and because the same underwriters sometimes insure both hull and cargo.

Marine insurance

An appreciation of the part played by marine insurance is essential to an understanding of the shipping industry and the special law that governs it. Most shipowners carry hull insurance on their ships and protect themselves against claims by third parties by means of “protection and indemnity” insurance. Waterborne cargo is almost universally insured against the perils of the seas. It is impossible in a brief outline such as this to go into any of the special intricacies, which are many, of marine insurance law. Most cases of damage to a ship or its cargo resolve themselves into settlements between insurance carriers. Proposals for changes in the maritime law must always be evaluated against this background of insurance coverage, as the imposition of liabilities that cannot be insured against can discourage all but the wealthiest ocean carriers from engaging in the affected trades.

Marine insurance is the oldest known form of insurance. Indeed, the institution of general average, under which the participants in a maritime venture contribute to losses incurred by some for the benefit of all, may itself be looked on as a primitive form of mutual insurance. Hull and cargo insurance today, in fact, is usually written on forms whose wording has changed little since the 18th century. The so-called “perils” clause, enumerating the risks insured against, customarily includes not only the natural hazards to which a vessel is exposed but man-made perils such as capture or destruction by enemy forces as well. In 1898, however, Lloyd’s of London underwriters inaugurated the practice of adding “Free of Capture and Seizure” (F.C.&S.) clauses to the basic policy forms, the effect of which was to remove war and similar risks from coverage. The practice has since become universal, with the result that the owner of a ship or cargo must either purchase separate war-risk insurance or else pay his marine underwriters an additional premium in return for deletion of the F.C.&S. clause.

An early type of marine liability insurance was against liability for damage that the insured vessel caused to other vessels. Such insurance was effected by the addition of a “running down” or “collision” clause to the basic hull policy insuring the owner or operator of a vessel against its loss or damage. On the theory that, if given full protection, owners and operators would not be encouraged to exercise proper care in the maintenance of their vessels and the selection of their masters and crews, hull underwriters at first refused to insure against more than 75 percent of the collision liability.

With the advent of steam-driven vessels of iron and steel in the 19th century, the potential liabilities of shipowners increased substantially. To protect themselves, British owners banded together in “protection and indemnity” associations, commonly known as “P. and I. Clubs,” whereby they insured each other against the liabilities to which they were all exposed in the operation of their vessels. These included liability for cargo damage, personal injury, and damage to piers, bridges, and other fixed objects, and also 25 percent of the liability for damage to other vessels against which the hull underwriters refused to insure. Foreign owners soon found the P. and I. Clubs attractive, and as of 1973 the operators of about 80 percent of the world’s ocean tonnage were insured with the British clubs and their Scandinavian and Japanese affiliates.

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