Chapter 8 1967 - Annus Horribilis

CHAPTER 8 1967 - ANNUS HORRIBILIS Hamilton, Bermuda THE 1960s was a decade when technical changes in shipping made their impact, one of them literally and with lasting influence. Most visible was the growth in the size of tankers, very large crude carriers (VLCCs) of up to 300,000 tons being needed for the annual carrying of a total of 1 billion tons of oil economically, oil transporta- tion accounting for 40 per cent of the world’s fleet. On drawing boards, to become actual by the early 1970s, were ultra-large crude carriers (ULCCs) of some 500,000 deadweight tons. A parallel development in the striving for economies of scale was the bulk carrier, ton-for-ton cheaper to build and operate. Ideal for carrying low-priced commodities such as coal, ores and scrap long distances, but in small- er volumes than for oil, it was to eclipse traditional tramps. Stuart Beare, a partner in Richards Butler, a firm of solicitors that had been associated with the club since the 1920s, particularly through Russell Stokes and Bill Wilson, who among the managers became known as the GLA (Greatest Living Authority) for his encyclopaedic and wise counsel, saw the difference: A side-effect was a growth in shipping operators. This involved a flourishing of time-charterers, who chartered in tonnage and undercut the liner services of the conferences. This particularly affected the Gulf, which became a burgeoning market with the hike in oil prices. These charterers were importing everything from all sorts of places. They operated on very small margins and were very claim-conscious, so that they would make small claims and fought hard when people claimed money from them when they thought it was not due. This introduced another party into the P & I clubs. You would have the shipowner, and the time-charterer, two entries and therefore two clients instead of one. Two safer packaging developments, the ro-ro carrying fully loaded vehicles and the container ship with its standardised boxes, affected claims. Both meant that goods could be boxed by the producer and unpacked by the recipient. Any intermediate handling was mechani- cal. Ro-ros, introduced in the 1950s on short sea routes, replaced cargo-liners on longer runs. Containers became a worldwide mode of transport. There was a bonus in that trucks and containers could be refrigerat- ed, and temperature control was better than in large holds. If it should break down, damage was probably more limited. The main advantage was that more secure packaging overcame the problem of piece goods such as Containers reduce damage to cargoes but are whisky being shipped in cartons and ‘accidentally on not immune to damage themselves. purpose’ being dropped on a corner, the contents being spirited away in the twinkling of an eye. Tallying prob- lems, including the expenses of double-checking, were reduced. For the club enlarged packaging meant a reduc- tion in the number of small claims on damage and shortage and, with fewer dockers, less spent on personal injury claims. It was not an end, however, to claims on high-value goods. Thieves had to exercise greater cun- ning, as Bill Smith, the club correspondent in Canada, observed: The favourite things to be pilfered in Montreal were ski boots, a valuable commodity. A container load came over once and, knowing they were ski boots, I advised the agents to tell the stevedores to put this container on the dockside and pile other containers all round it until it was ready for delivery in two or three days’ time or over the weekend. They did so and when they actually delivered the containers and got to the one in the middle it was empty. Someone must have been there with a forklift truck over the weekend and no one stopped them. They moved all the other containers, took out the contents and put all the other containers back. Sometimes an empty container was filled with bricks or some other low-cost make-weight. The possibilities opened up a new field for P & I cover; through transport, in which the operator accepted liability for complete transit on land and sea. To span the associated risks, a separate club was formed in 1968, the P & I clubs not extending their own cover for cargo liabilities on land until 1973. The Torrey Canyon breaks up on Seven Stones Reef, 18 March 1967, in the first major oil pollution disaster As 1967 opened and the centenary of the club was not far away the indications were that there would be some- thing to celebrate. By any standards, growth since 1869 had been good, over recent years excellent. The club remained the largest of its kind, with the international dimension firmly established and business still expand- ing. There were, however, major shipping companies yet to be wooed into membership. External events though were to cloud the rosy outlook, making 1967 a gloomy year. Not one month into the new P & I year, on 18 March the tanker Torrey Canyon struck the Pollard Rock on the Seven Stones Reef, midway between Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly, spilling her oil. There was nothing new about oil spillage. In 1923 there was a claim, opposed, that it had damaged Cornish oyster beds. At the time the committee recognised that ‘the amount at stake in this case is only small but an important principle is involved.’ Oil from many ships sunk in World War II had washed up on beaches as flecks of ‘tar’, marking the clothes of those unwary enough to sit on it. There had been other claims on oil spillage. For example, in Germany when a ship lost bunker oil, farmers were compensated for being unable to harvest reeds for thatch- ing. What was different about the Torrey Canyon was the scale. The ship, one of the new generation of tankers, had been lengthened with the insertion of a new, larger mid-section. She was carrying on a single voyage char- ter nearly 120,000 tons of crude from Kuwait to Milford Haven in South Wales. Being deeply laden, she had to catch the late evening tide for berthing. To save half an hour and avoid a wait of five days, the Italian master took a route to the east instead of the west of the Scillies. When the tanker struck the Pollard Rock thousands of gallons of crude oil, a filthy chocolate-coloured mess, started spilling from ruptured tanks. Detergent was sprayed continuously to disperse the slick but it was like try- ing to hold back the tide with a broom. Within two days beaches were being polluted in Cornwall, putting at risk the livelihoods of those dependent on the tourist season. Seabirds and fish were dying. The Channel Islands and Brittany were affected. Altogether the cost of cleaning up the pollution was put at £3 million. None of this would fall on the club because the Torrey Canyon was not entered with a member of the London Group, but all of the clubs would be affected indirectly. Just as television brought home the horrors of the Vietnam War, so the small screen vividly portrayed the extent of the Torrey Canyon disaster. For nearly a fortnight it made a running story on television: the heavy swell; the unstoppable spillage; blackened beaches; the efforts of the Dutch salvage engineers; floating fish and the patient work of cleaning bedraggled birds; the violent explosion in the engine room three days later; the attempt by four tugs to pull her off the rocks, breaking her back; the British government announcing its decision to bomb the ship - ‘We told the owners’; the dropping of 1,000-lb bombs to burn off the estimated 40,000 tons of oil remaining on board; the tanker in flames, with a pall of thick black smoke rising 2,000 ft in the air; aviation fuel being added to the flames to keep the wreck ablaze; bombardment with napalm and rockets; more spectac- ular explosions before the wreck sank to its grave. An outcome of the event was the so-called Intervention Convention of 1969, which made it clear that a state facing a situation such as the spillage from the Torrey Canyon had a perfect right to destroy a foreign ship, even in international waters, to prevent oil pollution of its coastline. In 1967, over the objections of the owners’ solicitors, the British government had hesitated to destroy the ship because she was not British and was stranded in international waters. The resulting delay perhaps did more harm to the environment than would have been done had the ship been sunk promptly. Extensive media coverage of the first major tanker disaster came at a time when concern for the environment was gathering. Since 1963, when Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring drew attention to the dangers of chemical pest control, the environment lobby had been growing. Now it was given additional impetus by a disaster at sea. So widespread were the effects of a major oil spillage that public anger was aroused: ‘The polluter must pay.’ Around the world more and more people were com- ing to realise that man had to change from being a predator on the planet to being its guardian. The environment lobby was to endure, exerting more pressure to change the rules of many industrial and commercial operations. The immediate debate was between those Bedraggled seabirds, smeared with oil, quickly became stock who wanted a new draft Convention to cover media pictures all types of pollution and Lord Devlin, the lawyer chairing the working committee drafting for the Comité Maritime International (CMI) who believed that the important thing was quickly to provide rules on the liability of tanker owners for oil spillage.

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