block units. The experts may decide to replace steel with carbon fibre, (considered to be superior in terms of weight, tensile and shear properties); or use drones to handle lashing bars. They should also consider the feasibility of stowing moveable securing equipment in the ports rather than on vessels, enabling their maintenance and compliance auditing by DPAs. The availability of expertise, construction materials, technologies and artificial intelligence means that shipowners have no excuse to delay designing a safer container securing system. The experts should not rule out a worldwide competition for a safer container securing system, running in parallel with their task.
Governments have been proactive in requiring seafarers to continually improve their skills and knowledge through courses and revalidation of their certificates of competency. Shipowners cannot sit idly by, content with a container securing system that a disinterested observer such as a consumer, would find primitive.
Seaworthiness of vessels at the commencement of
their voyages It is now appropriate to consider a vessel that commences its voyage the two known defects viz containers loaded contrary to the CSM and with the existing container securing system. Should its container stacks collapse in heavy weather, a court could decide that the vessel was unseaworthy at the commencement of its voyage. The unseaworthiness of such a vessel should be considered in light of the UK Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Alize 1954 and another (Appellants) v Allianz Elementar Versicherungs AG and others [2021] UKSC 51, the CMA CGM Libra. This vessel was found to be unseaworthy at the commencement of its voyage because its passage plan was defective when the vessel commenced its voyage from Xiamen, China. According to the Court, the unseaworthiness of the CMA CGM Libra meant that its owners breached their obligations under the Hague Rules 1924 [sic], Article 3.1:
The carrier shall be bound before and at the beginning of the voyage to exercise due diligence to make the ship seaworthy, properly man, equip, and supply the ship, make the holds, refrigerating and cool chambers, and all other parts of the ship in which goods are carried, fit and safe for their reception, carriage and preservation.
The following extracts are from the Conclusion of the decision at para 145:
(vi) Given the “essential importance” of passage planning for the “safety … of navigation”, applying the prudent owner test, a vessel is likely to be unseaworthy if she begins her
voyage without a passage plan or if she does so with a defective passage plan which endangers the safety of the vessel (see paras 124-128).
(x) The carrier is liable for a failure to exercise due diligence by the master and deck officers of his vessel in the preparation of a passage plan for the vessel’s voyage. The fact that navigation is the responsibility of the master and involves the exercise by the master and deck officers of their specialist skill and judgment makes no difference (paras 137-139).
The decision is simple: a vessel is unseaworthy at the commencement of the voyage if, at the
commencement of the voyage, the vessel’s passage plan is defective. The defect in question was the failure to mark, on the passage plan and the working chart – as required by the Guidelines for Voyage Planning – the shallow water areas outside the dredged channel. Shortly after the CMA CGM Libra dropped its pilot outbound from Xiamen, the master, (for reasons best ignored), navigated the vessel outside the dredged channel, at a speed of about 11 knots for about 3 minutes. Not surprisingly, the vessel grounded in shallow water outside the channel. The master explained that, if the shallow water areas outside the dredged channel had been marked on the working chart, he would not have left the dredged channel – an explanation also best ignored. The fact that the owner had provided the vessel with the wherewithal to prepare a compliant passage plan, did not absolve the shipowner from the master’s actions.
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