Protection of the Environment; a new Focus in the Convention on Salvage 1989

• Author: Justice Ryan
• Position: Justice of the Federal Court of Australia. This essay was presented as the F. S. Dethridge Memorial Address at the Maritime Law Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference in Perth Western Australia 12-14 November 2008. 1 Kennedy & Rose, Law of Salvage, (6th ed, 2002), 58 [105]
• Pages: 1-11

(2009) 23 A&NZ Mar LJ

Frank Stuart Dethridge Memorial Address 2008

Protection of the Environment;

a new Focus in the Convention on Salvage 1989

The Hon. Justice D M Ryan*

Introduction

Frank Dethridge and his firm, Mallesons, had during the 1960’s and early 1970’s acted in industrial matters for

all of the employers respondent to various awards of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. The main

award was the Maritime Industry Seagoing Award, the respondents to which included BHP, Australian National

Line, Colonial Sugar Refiners and Western Australian State Ships. Other, smaller traditional shipowners derived

their respondency through membership of a registered organisation of employers, the Commonwealth Steamship

Owners’ Association (CSOA). To say the least, industrial relations were not easy because there was a multitude

of different unions representing such disparate groups of seafarers as deck officers, engineers, marine cooks,

butchers and bakers, professional radio employees, marine stewards and pantrymen and seagoing shipwrights.

In about 1975 policy differences emerged between BHP, CSR, ANL and Western Australian State Ships on the

one hand, which were concerned to keep their vessels operating at almost any cost, and CSOA on the other,

whose members were oppressed by competition from foreign-flagged ships with much cheaper crewing. The

differences became so acute that Frank Dethridge and Mallesons felt that they could no longer represent the

whole body of employers in the industry. They, therefore, continued to instruct Brian Hill QC on behalf of the

‘Big Four’, and I, then a youngish industrial barrister, was retained for CSOA, instructed by Denis Worrall of

Middletons, himself a long-standing member of the this Association.

You can readily imagine that the strategic differences and divided representation of the formerly united

employer interests were not without their tensions. However, throughout it all, Frank Dethridge was unfailingly

courteous and considerate, and, as far as his duty to his clients allowed, was genuinely helpful to Denis and me

during our novitiate in the murky waters of maritime industrial relations.

My address today will doubtless seem narrow and unoriginal when compared with the variously elegant and

learned contributions of so many of my predecessors. Nevertheless, I am pleased and privileged to offer it in

acknowledgement of my personal debt to the distinguished maritime lawyer whom it commemorates and who is

rightly lauded for his efforts in founding this Association.

Some of you may fear from this longer than usual exordium that I am about to embark on an historical account

of half-forgotten industrial battles between shipowners and the former maritime unions which I have mentioned.

At this distance in time, those conflicts seem about as remote as the wars between the Medes and the Persians.

You may, therefore, be relieved to learn that I have drawn closer to what I gather is the theme of this year’s

Conference in choosing as my topic the concern with protection of the environment which is reflected in the

1989 Convention on Salvage.

Historical Background

Historically the law of salvage has its origins in the law of wreck which vested in the Crown, wrecked vessels

and goods found in them, if unclaimed. By the Statute of Westminster I of 1275, neither the ship nor anything in

her could be adjudged wreck where a living being escaped therefrom, ‘but where the owner established his title,

the goods were not to be called wreck and were to be handed to their owner on payment of salvage to those who

had saved and kept them.’1

* Justice of the Federal Court of Australia. This essay was presented as the F. S. Dethridge Memorial Address at the Maritime Law

Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference in Pert Western Australia 12-14 November 2008.

h

1 Kennedy & Rose, Law of Salvage, (6th ed, 2002), 58 [105].

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