The purpose of this article1 is to examine what is evidently a growing problem for the owners of tanker tonnage—particularly the independent owners—and to suggest certain courses of action which may help to preserve their traditional position in the face of claims for apparent cargo shortage. Because the subject is one which has previously received little attention in the literature, what follows is, for the sake of simplicity, mainly concerned with the crude oil trades, and the long-haul ones at that. The problem is, however, certainly more widespread than this comparatively narrow treatment may seem to suggest.

It is now nearly a century since the launching of the first ship specifically designed and built for the carriage of oil in bulk;2 and so it must seem strange that claims for short delivery should only recently have become a significant problem for the shipowner. After all, today’s tankers are no less well equipped than in the past as to pumps, pipes and other fittings; and with the recent increases in the real unit value of the cargoes carried—to say nothing of the growing attention to pollution of the seas— it would be little short of perverse to suggest that they are now handled with any less care and competence than in earlier days.

In fact, as one might expect, there have always been discrepancies between cargo figures: there is nothing new in that. What has changed is the attitude shown to those discrepancies by some charterers and receivers—at least when the out-turn figures are apparently smaller than the loaded.

Until a few years ago, it was universally accepted that transporting oil in bulk by sea was at best an untidy business; and if all the figures agreed to within the odd barrel or two in a hundred, then everything was very much as it should be. Occasionally, something would go seriously and identifiably wrong during the voyage; and if it was not obviously covered by art. 4 of the Hague Rules, a claim might be raised against the ship. But examination of the P. & I. Club ratings of tanker fleets would probably furnish the best evidence of how rare this was. So far as the owner was concerned, in the normal course of trade any loss, apparent or real, tended to lie where it fell. (And as a result of this, he soon lapsed into rather sloppy and complacent ways with regard to such documents as bills of lading—ways which any good dry cargo tramp owner could only regard with horror and amazement.)

Today, all this has changed. Refiners find themselves called upon to account for every barrel of oil that they buy. It is now much less common for charterer, shipper and receiver to be one and the same, or affiliates of the same corporate body, with the result that new conflicts of interest have arisen in the trade. As a consequence, much