It must be difficult to write a full-length book on laytime and demurrage. The subject is one to which few would turn either for excitement or for enjoyment. Moreover, apart from a handful of general principles, it is one which consists of a mass of case material explaining the many phrases which owners and charterers (sometimes apparently after tough negotiations on the point) have inserted into their charterparties over the last century or so. Many of these phrases have long fallen out of use and some hardly made sense when first devised. But, when wrestling today with some newly-invented phrase, even the most unpromising material may yield a glimmer of light just sufficient to give some help in understanding what the parties intended. (It would be absurd to believe that, save in the rarest of cases, brokers actually draft clauses with old authorities in mind—evidence that those who drafted the laytime clause actually had some particular authorities, or even some particular purpose, in mind would be inadmissible under the general rules of evidence. However, reasoning applied even many years ago can sometimes be equally applicable to the most recent phraseology.) Old cases cannot, therefore, simply be thrown into the wastepaper basket of his