Grounding

Suez Canal, March 23, 2021: the 400-meter Ever Given runs aground across the channel, blocks the waterway for six days and holds up 369 ships. The canal authority first claims 916 million dollars from the owner, then settles in July 2021 for an undisclosed sum. Grounding is contact between the ship and the seabed. It can be suffered, after a navigational error, a propulsion failure or heavy weather, or decided to avoid a sinking, in which case it is called voluntary stranding. It is a named peril of hull policies, and one of the few that even the narrowest cargo forms still cover, Institute Cargo Clauses (C) included, because it belongs to the major casualties. Its consequences go beyond hull damage: detention, loss of earnings, a general average contribution where expense is incurred to refloat, pollution. In a waterway, the hull casualty turns into a liability event of systemic scale. The classification separates what is suffered from what is sacrificed. Voluntary stranding decided for the common safety gives rise to a general average contribution, shared among all the interests in the adventure; accidental grounding stays with the interest that suffered it.