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The Northern Sea Route is a shipping lane connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through the Northern Russian Arctic Coast Line. As a result of climate change the ice in the Arctic Sea has been melting considerably over recent years, resulting in the shipping lane being partly free of ice during the summer months. Ice free however means the absence of a frozen ice sheet, there will still be broken off ice sheets in various sizes in the Arctic Sea during the ice free periods. Therefore ships using the Northern Sea Route require ice strengthened hulls or in some case ice breaker support.

For ship owners and charterers there would be a huge economic benefit for using the Northern Sea Route. For example a container vessel sailing from Tokyo to Hamburg via the Southern route through the Suez Canal would cover 13.949 nautical miles, depending on the ship roughly 48 days of sailing. The same vessel on the Northern Sea Route would cover only 8.077 nautical miles or roughly requiring 35 days of sailing. It is obvious that the Northern Sea Route would be fuel and time efficient and this cost saving will be the main drive for commercial shipping via this shipping lane. However, currently the number of transits made by commercial ships and the cargo volume passing via the Northern Sea Route is still rather limited, but it is slowly increasing over the past years.

Continue reading “The Northern Sea Route”

Nick Wilcox, Senior Associate and Albert Levy, Partner, both of Ince & Co LLP, Partner, debate the vagaries and confusion surrounding one aspect of the Maritime Labour Convention.

The Maritime Labour Convention 2006 (MLC) has been in force internationally since August 2013 and, in that time, it has become clear that it has received widespread ratification, that enforcement is a reality, and that ships run the risk of detention if they are not compliant. However, there has also been a good deal of confusion over the question of “who is the ‘shipowner’?” under the MLC. The answer to the question is important, since it is that person who has the principal burden of ensuring MLC compliance.

In the Maritime Labour Convention, the “shipowner” is defined to mean the owner of the ship or another organisation or person who has assumed responsibility for the operation of the ship from the owner and who in doing so has agreed to take over the duties and responsibilities imposed on shipowners under the MLC. This is the case even if another organisation carries out some of the duties of “shipowner” on its behalf. Therefore, the owner and the “shipowner” may well be different persons or organisations. Note that “shipowner” does not necessarily mean the owner of the ship in the proprietary sense.

Readers could easily be forgiven for being confused by the terminology. Lewis Carroll put it well in Through the Looking Glass: “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ Are you a “shipowner” under your charterparty? ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.” Continue reading “Maritime Labour Convention 2006: Are you a “shipowner” under your charterparty?”