Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
THE COLLISION CONVENTION 1910: CAN AN OLD SEA DOG LEARN NEW TRICKS?
The Hon Steven Rares*
The Collision Convention 1910 set general rules allocating responsibility for collisions depending on the presence and degree of any causal fault of each vessel, adopted over the twentieth century by most maritime nations in legislation or complementary court decisions. This paper suggests two possible updates where a vessel is at fault. First, enabling third parties to sue directly the P&I Club and hull and machinery insurer of a wrecked, badly damaged or abandoned vessel for up to the maximum amount for which, had she remained in her pre-collision condition, the owner could limit liability under the LLMC. Secondly, abolishing the rule in Art.4 (which the United States never recognised) that cargo owners, crew and passengers whose property is damaged cannot recover from the other vessel(s) at fault the proportion of their loss for which the vessel carrying their property was at fault.
I. THE 1910 COLLISION CONVENTION
The Collision Convention 19101 effected a few, now almost universally accepted, rules to regulate liability of a sea-going vessel for collisions between her and another sea-going or inland navigation vessel. Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers CJ,2 a highly regarded Admiralty jurist, gave this commonsense explanation of the term “sea-going vessel”, albeit, in seeking to give it a meaning in a statute creating a criminal offence3: “A sea-going vessel is a vessel which sets out to sea on a voyage”. In allowing the defendant’s appeal, his Lordship reasoned that “by no stretch of the imagination could [a jet ski] be so described”.4
One immensely important rule has endured without controversy. Article 8 of the Convention requires the master of each vessel in collision to render assistance to the other so far as possible without endangering his or her ship, crew and passengers. Despite the
* KC. Currently an independent arbitrator and mediator at Newmans Row (Sydney, Singapore and London) and Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law and Justice. Formerly a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia from 2006 to 2023. The author thanks Scarlett de Vine, his research assistant, for her assistance in the preparation of this paper. Any errors are the author’s alone.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 44th International Conference of the Comité Maritime International in Tokyo, Japan on 15 May 2025.
1. The Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law with respect to Collisions between Vessels, done at Brussels on 23 September 1910.
2. Giving the judgment of the Court of Appeal that included Rafferty and Mackay JJ in R v Goodwin [2005] EWCA Crim 3184, [38]; [2006] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 432, 439.
3. Merchant Shipping Act 1995 (UK).
4. R v Goodwin [2005] EWCA Crim 3184, [39]; [2006] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 432, 439.
The collision convention 1910: new tricks?
39