Unseaworthiness

Unseaworthiness means a ship's unfitness for the voyage undertaken, and it is not confined to the state of the hull: an inadequately trained crew, defective operating documentation, a fire-fighting system out of service or holds unfit to receive the goods all render a vessel unseaworthy in maritime law. The Hague-Visby Rules impose on the carrier not a result but due diligence, exercised before and at the beginning of the voyage, and a failure in that diligence costs it the defenses and limits it could otherwise have invoked. In cargo insurance, unseaworthiness is excluded only where the assured was privy to it at the time of loading, which protects the good faith shipper who has no control over the ship. In hull insurance, English law historically made it an implied warranty in voyage policies, a mechanism softened by the Insurance Act 2015, which suspends cover during the breach instead of discharging it. The problem solved is the allocation of a risk that only the shipowner can genuinely control.

In The CMA CGM Libra, the United Kingdom Supreme Court held on November 10, 2021 that a defective passage plan made the vessel unseaworthy: the owner, which was claiming a general average contribution of about 13 million dollars from cargo interests after the May 2011 grounding on leaving Xiamen, lost that claim for want of due diligence.

défaut de navigabilité, navire innavigable