the travaux préparatoires hague rules hague-visby rules - Comite ...

96 COMITE MARITIME INTERNATIONALThe Travaux Préparatoires of the Hague and Hague-Visby Rulesor is that wrong? If we are going to satisfy the cargo interests what we have to aim atdoing, is to put the bills of lading on the same footing as a bill of exchange. It mustconnote in every market of the world, whether you are buying or selling grain or sugaror whether you are arranging your finance or whether you are arranging your insurance,the minimum responsibility on the shipowner as defined by the Code. If youare not going to do that you have not taken the one step which as I understand the cargoowners want. (Hear, hear). The merchants, the bankers, the underwriters have cometo us shipowners and have said “Give us a document with which we can deal with thesame confidence and the same certainty as we deal with a bill of exchange”. We cannotdo that if we draw a distinction between bills of lading issued under charter-partiesand liner bills of lading. If we could think of any terms of doing it what would bethe result? If the cargo interests are right, that this negotiable bill of lading, this standardbill of lading, is of great advantage to cargo, would not the liners at once get anextra preference. They would say to the cargo owners: “We are the only people whocarry according to the standard bill of lading: the others are still outsiders; you havenot [347] an idea what your security is; you do not know if you have any security”.Now believe me, I know, and it is quite true (I have been bred up amongst the linersand I am regarded as a liner man), if we had started this on that other tack that we weregoing to make a liner bill of lading which would satisfy the cargo interests we shouldhave had all our friends the tramp coming to us saying that we were trying to steal theirbusiness. That is what would have happened. If this is going to be good work, if whatwe are going to produce is going to be a good article, the man who produces that goodarticle will command the market or get a better freight, when it comes to sailing. Allthe points that are raised with regard to these charters were known, and it is the factthat there has been enormous labour spent in adjusting charters as between trade andshipowners; it has been a free bargain; one knows all that; and in some of these chartersMr. Möller has told us it is expressly declared “weight unknown” or “number unknown”.Is there anything to stop businessmen who adjust those charters from puttingthose words on the bills of lading which are issued under the charters. They could givethe numbers or they need not give the numbers. You must remember that all thesenumber and weight clauses only start to operate at the instance of the shipper of thegoods. If he says nothing the shipowner needs to put nothing on the bill of lading. Ifthe charterer is content to take his goods without a negotiable bill of lading that is hisaffair, and it is only he and the shipowner who are interested in the transaction, andthere is no bona fide holder for value who could ever become interested without fullnotice of [348] what is in the charter party. If he chooses to take over the charter partyI suppose he will read it. But remember that the whole case made against us is: “Inthe flow of business, in the rapidity with which it has to be handled, the multitude ofpeople through whose hands it has to pass, there is not time to go into detail; we musthave a document which we can work on and we must all know without examinationthat that document carries a minimum of responsibility on the shipowner”.That is what we are after to day. It may be all non-sense. I troubled you at theHague with my belief that all this codification, getting away from absolute freedom ofcontract was a mistake, and I still hold that view, and, having worked for months tryingto find out exactly what it is that all the cargo interests want, and having tried tofind out exactly what all the shipowners would agree to, I have come to the conclusionthat if you left them to make their own bargain it would be infinitely better than tryingto do the work you have been trying to do. But there is hardly anybody else whoagrees with me. Everybody has this idea that we must have this negotiable documentput on a firm basis. Well, if they are right and I am wrong, and that does increase theinterchange of commodities all over the world, then we shipowners have done a goodjob and we have helped for a useful purpose. If it does not, well sooner or later we shall