In reaching their verdict, the three judges concluded that it was impossible to attribute blame to the three accused for the environmental harm done when the ship, with 77,000 tons of heavy oil aboard, eventually broke up and sank. They however noted that the accident was clearly caused by the maintenance state of the 26 year old ship.
After eleven years and the expenditure of so much expertise and legal firepower, what has changed? There is still argument about the issue of a place of refuge, which was so central to this unfortunate incident, with a depressing lack of headway made in the International Maritime Organization (IMO) or in regional assemblies or even in national law. Local pressure together with local and regional politics still play heavily over the decisions around the provision of a place of refuge or even shelter for a damaged ship, with as much concern around containerships, as there was about tankers and their polluting cargo and bunkers.
The UK “model” of the Secretary of State’s Representative – the SOSREP, which commended itself to the European Maritime Safety Agency as a proven system of decision-making that would make casualty handling much more certain and sure, has been rejected in favour of the prevailing “localism”.
Local politicians and authorities are just not willing to surrender their decision-making powers, even though the decisions they make may not have any great expertise behind them. And while BIMCO’s long-time suggestion of a “competent coastal state” may, with EMSA’s encouragement, be evening out and improving the level of competence around the long European coastline, with a better provision of contingency arrangements, there may be still some way to go.
It is true that in the intervening eleven years we have more regulations and closer supervision and monitoring of pollutants moving around the European coasts. But, without a doubt, the industry itself, in the shape of owners and charterers, has worked hard to upgrade the quality of tanker tonnage. The fleet is younger, well-maintained and operated to an ever-higher standard, while charterers who have been so painfully appraised of their responsibilities, exercise these through far more thorough vetting arrangements.
Inspections are more thorough, with an arguably better focus on the more vulnerable parts of a ship, as exercised by class, by vetting and by operators themselves. Single-hulled vessels like the ancient Prestige, have long disappeared from European waters. It is fair to suggest that lessons really have been learned.
Is there more to do? Certainly we need a further push on places of refuge and an end to the local politics which intrude in any emergency and make procedures less efficient than they could be. Shipmasters, who will be disappointed at the judges’ verdict on the Master’s “disobedience”, will doubtless suggest that there is need for greater clarity as to the coastal state’s powers and responsibilities of intervention. An up to date assessment of the authority and responsibility of the shipmaster, which has not changed for centuries, may be overdue.