Places of Refuge – A relook warranted!

When a ship gets into difficulties, one of the main options of an owner or master is to seek to put into sheltered waters where the difficulties can be remedied or minimized before proceeding on the voyage. This place is referred to as a ‘Place of Refuge’.

The concept of what is now called a place of refuge for ships in distress has existed for over 2000 years. It has been described as ‘firmly entrenched and time hallowed'.

There have been three major incidents involving ships, laden with crude oil and other hazardous cargoes, requesting and being refused access to places of refuge. In two of these cases, involving the Erika and the Prestige, the ships subsequently sank and caused severe pollution damage. In the third, involving the Castor, a disaster was narrowly avoided.

The problem of places of refuge clearly flows from a substantial change being made to what was considered to be an unwritten custom of the sea that ships in distress were always granted a place of refuge. The rights that flowed from the granting of a place of refuge were significant and reflected the needs of distressed ships both of the crew and the ship owner and cargo owners.

The extent of the custom of granting refuge to ships in distress has been called into question over the last sixty years for various reasons including changes to shipping and salvage industry practices, the growing concern over protection and preservation of the marine environment and the changes in international law both in the environmental and maritime fields. The result is that the custom of granting access, if it still exists, in practice only covers humanitarian aspects and any rights the ship and cargo interests may have had are under serious challenge. The main factor in this change is the growing awareness of the need and obligation to protect the marine and coastal environment from pollution by dangerous cargoes carried by substandard shipping.

This change in attitude to the environment and the standard of shipping has resulted in a conflict between those interests concerned with the successful completion of the voyage and those interests concerned with the preservation of the marine and coastal environment. A solution to this conflict has proved elusive particularly since the shipping industry safety net that should have to a large degree prevented the cause of the problem has failed. 

Generally and historically, the first place in which a ship in distress would want to take refuge is a port. Therefore, before examining what has been put in place internationally and nationally to address the problem with places of refuge, it is necessary to begin the analysis by examining to what extent international law deals with access to ports by ships in general and ships in distress in particular.

The IMO Resolution which gives the guidelines for giving refuge to ships in distress needs to be implemented at the earliest if we want to avoid a potentially greater environmental disaster than experienced so far.  Member nations especially those with large coastlines are susceptible and hence should have an implicit interest to expedite the implementation of these guidelines.  There is an urgent need to move forward and not wait for the next disaster to take place.