‘Ship completes voyage without incident’ is hardly the maritime headline which will get you clicking on a story when Daily Splash hits your inbox. Inevitably, it’s when things go wrong that shipping gets attention, particularly from the mainstream media. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a quote attributed to the media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who saw that stories, and particularly pictures, of dramatic incidents were a sure fire way to sell newspapers. The past few months have certainly seen a handful of dramatic incidents make the headlines, but is an increase in maritime casualties a worrying trend ? The dramatic footage of the Dali colliding with the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore is one of the most enduring images of the year, and this was followed by, amongst other incidents, the collision off Hay Point of two bulk carriers which saw an LNG bunker tank (fortunately empty) ruptured. Three weeks later and the internet was alive with footage of a huge explosion on a containership in Ningbo, allegedly stemming from a container carrying lithium batteries. Claims by value are up by more than 50% Dramatic though these incidents have been, in actual fact there has not been a notable increase in maritime casualties so far this year. Information gathered from members of the International Group of P&I Clubs indicates that the actual number of claims so far this year is fairly static, but claims by value are up by more than 50%, so the claims are getting bigger by value rather than by volume. This means that there are likely to be more claims under the International Group’s pooling agreement , whereby claims above $10m are pooled amongst the group’s 13 members. Following on from two relatively benign years as far as larger pool claims were concerned in 2022 and 2023, this year’s increase in larger claims will no doubt see insurance rates firm at the 2025 renewal. Expect some fraught discussions between owners and insurers when negotiations commence later this year. Whilst the incidents in Baltimore and Hay Point both point to ships losing power prior to the actual collision, most of the major incidents this year appear to be one-off events rather than a worrying trend. Deviating round the Cape of Good Hope to avoid Red Sea hostilities certainly exposes ships to much harsher weather than a Suez transit, as seen by the grounding of the Ultra Galaxy off South Africa in July and this, together with other aspects of climate change, is sure to play an increasing role in the algorithms insurers use to calculate risk. Perils of the sea will always exist and given the ever increasing volumes of goods carried over the oceans, shipping’s safety record is impressive and constantly improving. It is therefore rather disheartening that one statistic which seems to be increasing is instances of crew abandonment. No matter the strides being made in the fields of automation and artificial intelligence, the autonomous ship is still some way off. If anything comes from the dramatic images of recent incidents, let’s hope it is a greater appreciation and recognition of the seafarers without whom our daily lives would grind to a halt. TagsSplash Extra Archive Splash Extra August 2024