‘Marine insurance industry facing the perfect storm’

The shipping industry has
been warned by a leading
maritime lawyer that it may
soon face its “Deepwater
Horizon moment” in
the event of a mega
containership casualty.
Speaking at a Maritime
London function last
week, Holman Fenwick
Willan partner Andrew
Chamberlain said that the
consequences of a serious
incident involving one of the
larger containerships “may
well result in a complete
change in the accepted
liability regimes and even
the traditionally accepted
insurance arrangements for
such large vessels.”
Recent high profile
container ship casualties
have involved relatively
small vessels capable
of carrying up to 4688
containers (MSC Napoli).
The Rena, which is
currently breaking up off
the coast of New Zealand,
has a capacity of 3352
containers. By comparison,
the largest vessels sailing
today are carrying over
15000 boxes.
He said that in the event
of the loss of the largest
scale of containership, the
epic scale of the incident
would mean that the salvage
industry would struggle to
deal with the removal of the
containers and wreckage.
He warned that the salvage
industry had limited and
ageing resources, was
increasingly risk averse
and today consisted of
only around four or five
companies with a genuine
global capability.
“The industry is facing
the perfect storm. We
have a global recession,
high cargo values (relative
to ship values), ever
larger and untested ships,
environmental concerns
and increasing public and
government awareness
of the impact of shipping
incidents.”