If this were a sermon, my text would be taken from the NACCA Law Journal of 1959:1

An act which is vicious in its impact, unconscionable in its results and outmoded in an age of institutionalised protective insurance, if it cannot be repealed outright, deserves only a narrow, grudging and constrictive construction.

No prizes for guessing that the object of this vitriolic comment was the United States Limitation of Liability Act of 1851. Such observations, or at least the rationale behind them, are not confined to law review commentators. In the U.S., the judicial attitude to limitation of liability in the second half of the century has been uniformly hostile. The doctrine is regarded as an anachronism running counter to the proper and prevalent policy of ensuring full recovery.2 Of course, this lack of enthusiasm for limitation is further fuelled by the fact that the greater the maritime catastrophe, the smaller the fund under current U.S. law. But the title of my paper has not in fact been provoked by the desire to take up arms against judicial attitudes in the U.S. in this field. Enthusiasm for limitation of liability in every jurisdiction waxes and wanes like any fashion. The conventional theme is that limitation is old fashioned in the sense that it has outlived its usefulness and is unnecessary in the sense that there is adequate and accessible insurance cover. I revert to these propositions later. However, the standard of the debate was given a well-needed lift by Lord Mustill in his address in 1992 to the British Maritime Law Association entitled “Ships are different—or are they?”3 Lord Mustill urged us to review the matter from a different perspective. Let me very briefly remind you.