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A tug is assisting a loaded barge into a berth. The tug’s master misjudges the approach, the barge strikes the dock, and there is damage to the barge, the dock, and the cargo. Who pays depends almost entirely on two things. Which contract form governs, and which side of the Atlantic you are on. International towage has settled on a risk allocation that the United States Supreme Court declared void as a matter of public policy in 1955 and has never retreated from. That decisio

On 29 September, an operation in Somali waters freed the remaining crew of the hijacked vessel Honour 25. Five seafarers were killed during the rescue. Several others were seriously injured. The Honour 25 was one of three vessels released that week. Together with the Seamull and the Eureka, 44 seafarers came out of captivity that had run for months. Their governments are now working with the shipowners and relevant authorities on repatriation. Twenty-two seafarers remain aboa

The International Group of P&I Clubs finalized its reinsurance arrangements for the 2026/27 policy year, effective from noon on 20 February 2026. Four of the five vessel categories got a rate reduction. One did not. Fully cellular container ships went up 15 percent, to $1.0237 per gross ton. Persistent oil tankers fell 8 percent, dry cargo fell 5 percent, passenger vessels fell 8.5 percent, and clean tankers were held flat. For a container operator, that is a cost increase ar

On 10 November 2025, the United States and China each suspended the port fee regimes they had imposed on one another's shipping. The suspension runs twelve months. It expires on 10 November 2026, which is roughly five weeks from now, and there is no guarantee it will be renewed. Most charter parties fixed since then have been written as though the fees do not exist, because at the moment of fixing they did not. If the measures resume, those contracts will be silent on a charg

A counterparty screens clean. The name returns no hits on the Specially Designated Nationals list, the company is registered in a jurisdiction with no sanctions program against it, and the vessel it owns has never appeared on a designation notice. None of that tells you the company is not sanctioned. Under the ownership rules applied by the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, an entity can be subject to an asset freeze without ever being named, purely b

On August 21 and August 24, a specialized team of Coast Guard law enforcement officers, a vessel inspector, Coast Guard cyber protection personnel, and FBI cyber operators boarded two foreign-flagged oil tankers in the Gulf of Mexico. The joint statement said the boardings were designed to ensure the integrity of each vessel's operational and information technology systems following indications that their networks had been compromised by foreign cyber actors. One of the vesse

The bill of lading is the most important document in international trade and one of the few that does three unrelated jobs at once. It is a receipt for goods, evidence of the contract of carriage, and a document of title that can be bought, sold, and pledged while the cargo is still at sea. Most of the disputes that arise around it come from confusing those functions or from treating the third one as a formality. A shipper who focuses on the description of goods, a carrier wh

In October 2006, the capesize bulk carrier Ocean Victory was discharging iron ore at Kashima in Japan when weather deteriorated. A long swell combined with a northwesterly gale reaching Force 9 on the Beaufort scale. The master decided to leave the berth, lost control of the vessel in the Kashima fairway, and she was driven onto the breakwater and became a total loss. The vessel's hull insurers paid, took an assignment of the owners' and demise charterer's rights, and brought

On September 9, a Federal Maritime Commission administrative law judge rejected Peloton Interactive's claim against Flexport in full. The company had sought $33.7 million in detention, demurrage, and storage charges accumulated during the pandemic-era supply chain disruption. It recovered nothing. The breakdown of what was claimed is instructive. Roughly $13.8 million in demurrage, $16.2 million in equipment detention, and $3.7 million in yard and warehouse storage, across th

A hoist motor on a ship-to-shore crane burns out. A compressor in a refrigerated warehouse seizes on a Friday night. A transformer feeding a bulk conveyor system arcs and fails. In each case the equipment is destroyed, the operation stops, and the commercial property policy does not respond. Not because of a limit, a deductible, or a coverage dispute, but because the property form excludes the cause of loss by design. Equipment breakdown coverage fills that gap. It is inexpen

Six months into the conflict, the marine insurance market has a number. David Osler, law and marine insurance editor at Lloyd's List, puts war risk claims arising from the fighting at roughly $2 billion across more than 70 filings. On his assessment it is exceeded, over the past decade, only by the payouts arising from the containership that brought down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in 2024. The International Maritime Organization has recorded more than 72 attack

Most maritime companies in the United States are privately held. Family towing operations, regional barge lines, terminal companies, shipyards, forwarders, and single-vessel owners. No public shareholders, no securities filings, and frequently no formal board beyond the people who own the business. The common assumption in that setting is that directors and officers liability insurance is something public companies buy to satisfy investors. It is not. Private company leadersh

For a terminal operator, warehouse, or forwarder, revenue can stop overnight while costs carry on. Rent, equipment leases, payroll, and financing do not pause because a fire closed your facility or a windstorm took the roof off. Business interruption coverage exists to bridge exactly that gap, and for an operation with high fixed costs it is frequently the difference between a difficult year and a closed business. It is also the coverage most often bought at the base level an

A voyage charter gives the charterer a fixed period to load and discharge. Use less and the owner may owe despatch. Use more and the charterer owes demurrage. Between those two outcomes sits a calculation that is arithmetically simple and legally treacherous, and most disputes turn on which hours counted rather than on how the addition was done. The Laytime Definitions for Charter Parties 2013 define laytime as the period of time agreed between the parties during which the ow

A tank barge on the Lower Mississippi carrying 30,000 barrels of product is, in insurance terms, a modest asset. The hull value is a fraction of a deepsea tanker. The crew is small. The trade is domestic and familiar. The pollution exposure attached to it is not modest, it is not limited to the value of the barge, and under a set of circumstances that are considerably easier to trigger than most operators assume, it is not limited at all. This article covers how the Oil Pollu

On Sunday August 23, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority published its first Non-Compliant Vessels list. Announced through the body's X account and hosted on its website, the list names vessels Iran says have violated its arrangements for transiting the Strait of Hormuz and warns that they face restrictions on future passages including fines, detention, seizure, or confiscation. Shipping companies, the statement said, must review the list before chartering in order to avoid pot

Somewhere in your hull policy there is a figure. It was probably set when the vessel was acquired, adjusted once or twice since, and has not been examined closely in years. That number is not an administrative detail. It determines what you are paid if the vessel is lost, whether a casualty counts as a total loss at all, whether you are forced to repair a boat that is not worth repairing, and how much cover you can lawfully buy elsewhere. It is one of the few genuinely strate

A container ship catches fire in the Arabian Sea. Your cargo is in a hold that never burned, on a vessel you do not own, in a casualty you had nothing to do with. Weeks later you receive a demand for 54 percent of the value of your goods before anyone will release them. That is not a mistake and it is not extortion. It is general average, one of the oldest surviving principles in commercial law, and the demand is enforceable. For cargo interests it is the single most surprisi

The International WorkBoat Show returns to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans December 2-4. More than 1,000 exhibitors, upwards of 13,000 attendees, and the one US trade event where the inland, harbor towing, and offshore support segments all show up in the same building. Nord Young will be there. Not exhibiting this year, just walking the floor. The conference program has not been fully published yet, so this is a preview of the exhibit floor rather than a

On the afternoon of August 20, a product tanker transiting west through the Gulf of Aden broadcast a distress call on VHF Channel 16 reporting that an unauthorized vessel was approaching. Her AIS then transmitted a message reading PIRATE ONBOARD HELP. Shortly afterward she altered course toward Somalia. Six armed men had boarded the 32,200 dwt Sibu 1, IMO 9204776, roughly 136 nautical miles east of Al Mukalla, Yemen. Twenty crew were aboard. Sixteen Indians, one Syrian, one S

[Image from Wikimedia Commons, from User Unukorno, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0] On January 9, 2025, a 152,000 dwt crude tanker suffered a total blackout in the Baltic Sea. She drifted unmanned in heavy seas, lost all maneuverability, and came into German territorial waters off the island of Rügen. German authorities towed her to an anchorage off Sassnitz to prevent a spill. She is still there. The Eventin has now been at anchor off a German resort island for more than ni