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PART II - HAGUE RULES 155Article 3 (1)(a) - Seaworthinessble of contempt of court. We’ve got to put it right and the only question is under whatcircumstances should the carrier be considered to have exercised due diligence.Our President has referred to the report of the British Maritime Law Association,I think it is in the little yellow brochure 3 before you but since that time we have establishedand of course sent to the Secretariat the final report of April 30th 1963 andI hope you all have it.Now the proposition that we make which starts on page 11 is a proposition whichis the result of very careful consideration and the result of agreement with our cargointerests. Now may I just explain what the suggestion is, I believe the question is underwhat circumstances should the carrier be considered to have exercised due diligenceand we suggest that there are three with two provisos. The first circumstance inwhich he should be considered to have exercised due diligence is the employment ofclassification surveyors who are experts or in the service of the shipowners. They arerather like watchdogs and somewhat like accountants in the land corporation, to seeto the requirements of the Classification Society, which are even more onerous thanthis, most of them legal liabilities, are fulfilled.The second circumstance is the employment of shipbuilders and ship repairers andthe other is other independent contractor, but we have three provisos that we thinkshould be conditions imposed upon [144] the shipowner if he is to enjoy this exemptionlimiting the burden cast upon him. At present it is that the circumstances must besuch that it is appropriate to employ such contractors, by that we mean that is appropriatein the normal course of the ship’s operations to employ an independent contractorsuch as a ship repairer to carry out the duty of making the ship seaworthy. Thesecond proviso is that the carrier must select a contractor of good repute. Now it isquite obvious to us that if he selects any yard in this country or in Holland it would beipso facto of good repute, but that does not apply all over the world, and therefore thecarrier is not to have this benefit unless he has honestly selected a yard of good reputethat is required. The third proviso that we make is that the carrier and his servantsmust take such provisions as would be reasonable in the circumstances to superviseand inspect the work done. Now by that we mean this, if one of the big, famous andwell-established liner companies puts in its vessel it is left for repair say under classificationunder the four yearly classification survey it will of course choose a yard of reputequite apart from what we are saying now but it will have a large staff of technicalsuperintendents and marine engineers and superintendents and it would be normaland right for these experts to be in attendance from time to time having a look to seewhat the yard was doing. No one who has any knowledge of ship repairs would saythat they should be there all the time, but in the normal course of events a shipowningcompany of that eminence would naturally we would say have periodical inspectionsby its own technical staff, but if a little owner who would not have and could not afforda highly qualified technical staff of marine and engineer superintendents puts inhis ship for repair well then you cannot expect him by himself to supervise so satisfactorilyas you would expect the [145] liner company so he would in certain circumstancesemploy marine surveyors. It is all a question for the unfortunate judge who hasto deliver judgment on a case of this kind. We suggest that this should be conditionalupon his exercising a proper supervision where the circumstances make it reasonableto do so.Finally, we limit this modification to the term repair and maintenance of the ship.I must apologise gentlemen for having put in our report so late as the 30th April whichmay have caused some inconvenience to the secretariat but it was because of these discussionswith our cargo interests which necessarily took a very long time. So far asthose that are mainly concerned with shipowners’ interests only this is not so difficultfor us to get what I may call the official view from the Chamber of Shipping, but for