Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
THE NEW SALVAGE CONVENTION: GREEN SEAS AND GREY AREAS
Geoffrey Brice*
Preamble
It is a great honour for me to be asked to give this paper in memory of Donald O’May. He was indeed an expert lawyer in so many fields of maritime law: his breadth of knowledge, his wisdom and judgment were unique. I got to know him well in the course of the drafting and preparation of the new Salvage Convention nearly 10 years ago and will always remember him for his experience, his quiet good humour, unfailing modesty and courtesy. He is sorely missed by all of us who practise in this field.
Introductory
Following the preparation of a draft Convention in 1905 by the Comité Maritime International (CMI), the Brussels Convention on Salvage 19101 was concluded. The United Kingdom enacted the Maritime Conventions Act 1911 which did little more than enact three somewhat ancillary Articles in the Convention. Section 6 enacted Art. 11, relating to the duty of a ship’s master to assist persons in danger of being lost at sea; s. 7 enacted part of Art. 6, relating to the manner in which the court should apportion salvage remuneration between (inter alia) owners, master and crew; and s. 8 enacted Art. 10, by providing for a two-year time limit for salvage claims. It appears to have been assumed that the substance of much (but not all2) of the Convention reflected existing English law. The United States legislation adopted a similar stance in the Salvage Act 1912.3
The 1910 Convention4 contained no fundamental alterations in the substance of the main body of salvage law as understood by an English lawyer. However, since
* Q.C., Lloyd’s Salvage Arbitrator. This paper is the text of the Donald O’May Lecture in Maritime Law, delivered at the Institute of Maritime Law of the University of Southampton on 23 November 1989.
1. I.e., the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Respecting Assistance and Salvage at Sea signed at Brussels 23 September 1910. The original is in the French language but, by Art. 34, the original version of the new Convention is in English and five other languages, each text being equally authentic.
2. See Art. 5, which provides for a right to remuneration when salvage services have been rendered by or to vessels belonging to the same owner. This is not a remedy known to English law (save in the case of purely contractual rights arising between the insured shipowner and his insurer under a “sister ship clause” in a policy of marine insurance).
3. 46 U.S.C. ss. 727–730. It is to be noted that s. 727 (unlike the Maritime Conventions Act 1911) permits salvage between ships in common ownership.
4. For full text, see Singh, International Maritime Law Conventions (1983) (hereafter “Singh”), Vol. 4, 3084; Brice, Maritime Law of Salvage (1983) (hereafter “Brice”), 365; Steel and Rose, Kennedy’s Law of Salvage, 5th edn. (1985) (hereafter “Kennedy”), para 1506.
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