Shipping being a high pressure business where the maxim “time is money” is even more true than in many other land-locked enterprises, it is inevitable that the shipping community will continually strive for greater efficiency and greater clarity. The commercial law of this country was created and fashioned by such considerations and will no doubt continue to be so in the time ahead. Lawyers are forever being asked to give approval or disapproval and even on occasions, God forbid!, construe documents created in moments of inspiration by all kinds of interested people for all kinds of purposes. Lawyers are also approached by clients requesting specific documents for new enterprises where there is no existing documentation or where the existing documentation is inadequate.

As a result of this commercial and intellectual activity the shipping community has evolved a large number of documents specifically designed for particular trades, the carriage of particular cargoes or particular voyages. This activity has also over the years given birth to documents, particularly bills of lading, incorporating large numbers of specific clauses dealing with the parties’ rights and obligations inter se in respect of the carriage. These clauses deal with everything from a description of the parties who are deemed to be bound by the contract to the court where one or both of them is to be sued and the law which is to govern a dispute arising between them.

It therefore comes as no surprise that there should be a backlash to this increasing complexity. While parties to contracts of carriage wish to preserve the certainty which (theoretically at least) the traditional kind of shipping document provided, those parties who—so to speak—were in the field, such as shippers, shipping agents and forwarding agents found that their production was becoming increasingly bogged down in red tape at the very time when ships themselves were becoming more efficient. It was also apparent that the administration and cost of operating a system geared to the deployment of such complicated documentation was constantly on the increase. All this inevitably affected production and turn-round time.

The trade therefore arrived at the point where the shipping community wished the advantages of easier, less complicated, documentation yet at the same time wished to maintain the protection which the traditional kind of document had afforded. After all, their lawyers told them that they did ! There are indeed very good basic considerations which motivate such advice. What, after all, is the point of having a very short, clear, simple form of contract which does nothing to delineate the parties’ rights and obligations (and these can be legion!) inter se. Nevertheless, lawyers, bankers, insurers and