ABSTRACT
In English law there is little in the way of authority to establish what constitutes a recognised custom of the trade. When the York-Antwerp Rules were reviewed by the CMI International Sub-Committee in 1973, no recommendation was made to amend this Rule with reference to the practice of carrying containers on deck 'because it was felt that generally a custom to carry containers on deck was already held to exist". In the 1880s a number of cases on the question were decided in the English courts, as a result of which it could be stated with certainty that so far as English law was concerned a jettison of a deck cargo carried in accordance with a recognised custom of the trade, and not in violation of the contract of affreightment, was within general aver-age. At the Liverpool Conference of 1890, therefore, the British Association of Average Adjusters proposed an amendment to Rule I accordingly, but this proposal was not accepted.
