In more recent times we have got used to the fact that the owner of a tanker which causes pollution is liable for all the consequences of a spill and only has very limited defences. The owner may limit his liability by reference to the tonnage of his vessel and, if the damages exceed the limit, a fund set up by the oil industry will compensate victims. The most recent case in the United Kingdom involved the Braer. Initially hailed as a major environmental disaster, it was quickly downgraded by the Press to a relatively minor incident, probably due to the singular lack of dead seabirds. In fact, this was a major incident and compensation totalling £46 million has already been paid out—more than half of that amount having been paid to salmon farmers.

We are all now so familiar with the provisions of the CLC and the Fund Convention and their various Protocols that they give an illusion of having always been there. Many people are under the delusion that the law, as set out in CLC and Fund Conventions, are merely a codification of the law as it existed in 1967. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My father acted for the liability insurers of the Torrey Canyon in dealing with the claims submitted by the U.K. and French Governments. The more he looked at the claims, the less sure he was that the claimants could establish a cause of action. He also concluded that, even if a cause of action could be established, the damages being claimed were probably too remote to be recoverable. With clients’ agreement he sent a detailed set of instructions jointly to Basil Eckersley and the Hon. H. A. P. Fisher, Q.C.1 They both shared my father’s concerns. There was no doubt that central Government and local authorities had incurred extremely heavy expenditure in cleaning up the oil and had