‘Convenience’ ships under fire

Press, 29 January 1982, Page 1

‘Convenience’ ships under fire

Wellington reporter Almost three-quarters of shipping cargo lost between 1975 and 1979 was carried in ships manned under the flag of convenience, said Captain A. F. Mclntyre, an assistant to the Court of Inquiry into the grounding of the Pacific Charger. Captain Mclntyre, a retired master mariner, said in an addendum to the report of the Court that shipowners intended when registering ships under flags of conveni-

ence to evade obligations that would be incurred in the registration of a vessel in their own countries.The Pacific Charger was nominally owned by a Liberian company incorporated in Liberia solely for owning the vessel, the report said. The Liberian company was a wholly-owned subsidiary of a Japanese firm, Kansai Steamship Company, Ltd. Some control on the passage of ships registered in flag of convenience countries

must be exercised in New Zealand, Captain Mclntyre said. Minimum standards could be set for officers manning such vessels in New Zealand waters. A second assistant to the court, Captain R. Bird, a retired harbourmaster, said New Zealand could refuse to charter vessels licensed in countries permitting incompetence in qualifying officers. “If Liberian vessels continued to trade to New Zealand and 1 were manned by officers as incompetent as

those on the Pacific Charger, there was a grave risk of future stranding,” said Captain Bird.

“No man (the master of the Pacific Charger) would be permitted to have control of any class of vessel in this country but, as things are, such manned vessels are permitted to enter New Zealand waters and put the shore-line and off-shore fisheries at risk from massive pollution,” he said.

Other forms of control might be to embark pilots on Liberian or Panamanian

crude oil carriers in open waters before those vessels entered confined waters; to make employment of coastal pilots obligatory while such vessels were in New Zealand waters; and, to limit them to shipping tracks and lanes to be marked on charts. The Liberian Bureau of Maritime Affairs said that it would give the fullest consideration to the report, Captain Mclntyre said, but although Liberia had ratified all maritime safety conventions in force there was little evidence found by the Court of its honouring them.

“The submission made by counsel for the Liberian bureau read more like an effort to excuse it, or justify its existence,” he said.

A valid certificate of competence appeared to be just a matter of interpretation. There were no facilities in Liberia for training or examining officers before issu-

ing a certificate of competence.

Flags of convenience seemed to dominate the world shipping industry, he said. More than 70 per cent of ship tonnage lost between 1975 and 1979 flew the flag of convenience, and one ship in every 74 of these fleets, and those registered in Greece, was lost every year during the same period. By comparison one ship in every 228 registered in other countries was lost each year between 1975 and 1979.

More than 73 per cent of flag of convenience tonnage (deadweight) was owned in only four countries — the United States, Hong Kong, Japan and Greece. The excessive number of casualties of vessels registerd under a flag of convenience could be reduced by prohibitions on issuing licences to unqualified and untrained officers.

Captain blamed — P.2