ABSTRACT
Cargo interests denied the shipowner's claim for contribution under the York-Antwerp Rules 1974, arguing, inter alia, that the master's conduct in the way the efforts to refloat were undertaken was so unskilful as to be unreasonable. In the Commercial Court Hobhouse J. accepted that on the evidence this was the case, but he held that in accordance with the Rule of Interpretation, the specific provisions of Rule VII, which do not include a test of reasonableness, applied to the exclusion of Rule A. At the 1924 Stockholm Conference it was proposed in part to widen the scope of the Rule so that any damage done to a ship or cargo which was brought about by working the machinery and boilers in efforts to refloat a ship that was ashore and in a position of peril should be allowed in general average, but with a proviso that no such loss or damage should be allowed when the ship was afloat.
