ABSTRACT
Lord Wilberforce: My Lords, these appeals arise out of a charterparty and a subcharterparty both relating to a medium-sized newbuilding tanker to be constructed in Japan. By the time the tanker was ready for delivery the market had collapsed, owing to the oil crisis of 1974, so that the charterers’ interest was to escape from their contracts by rejecting the vessel. The ground on which they hoped to do so was that the vessel tendered did not correspond with the contractual description. Both charterparties were on the well known form Shelltime 3. The result of the appeal depends primarily on the view taken of the sub-charterparty between the appellants in the fi rst appeal (Reardon Smith) and the respondents in that appeal (Hansen-Tangen) . . .
