10.1 Introduction

The WRC 2007 creates a variety of public law rights and duties for States and shipowners.1 This chapter is more concerned with the intersection between such public law issues and the WRC 2007 provisions creating liabilities that will affect shipowners and their insurers. These provisions are mainly designed to benefit States faced with wreck removal operations, but they use essentially private law mechanisms to ensure that the cost of dealing with wrecks is backed by liability and insurance provisions.