Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
NON-TIDAL SALVAGE
The Goring
On 14 September 1984, the Goring, a passenger vessel, allegedly broke free of her moorings in the River Thames and began to drift downstream. She was in non-tidal waters. Had she continued, she would have collided with a line of moored vessels; and, had she survived any such collisions, she would have arrived at Reading Bridge. A group of Bohemian Club members, rowing from De Montford Island in the Thames, checked the drift and made the Goring fast to a vacant mooring. On 22 July 1985, the plaintiff group members issued a writ in rem against the Goring claiming salvage remuneration. After entering an appearance, the defendant owners of the Goring applied to strike out the writ as showing no cause of action.
The issues before the courts were whether a salvage claim could lie (a) where the material events took place in non-tidal internal waters, and (b) where the salved vessel was a pleasure craft.
The plaintiffs won before Sheen, J.,1 lost (by a majority) in the Court of Appeal2 and lost comprehensively in the House of Lords.3 In the Court of Appeal they lost on both points but in the House of Lords counsel for the Goring and her owners did not seek to rely on the point that salvage was excluded because the vessel was a pleasure craft. It was conceded (surely rightly) that the Goring, being a vessel used in navigation, was capable of being the subject-matter of salvage services.
The point at issue in the House of Lords involved not only Admiralty jurisdiction in personam and in rem but, because “salvage” is uniquely an Admiralty claim, the scope of the claim in English law. Lord Brandon, with whom all other members of the House agreed, held that in English law no salvage claim lay in respect of a vessel in non-tidal waters. This conclusion was based on a rigorous detailed examination of the statutory provisions relating to Admiralty jurisdiction since 1840. It seems to have been common ground that prior to 1840 no action for salvage would lie in respect of non-tidal rivers. The plaintiffs based their argument, that in 1987
1. [1987] Q.B. 687; [1986] 3 LMCLQ 276.
2. [1987] Q.B. 687; [1987] 3 LMCLQ 262.
3. [1988] 2 W.L.R. 460.
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