THE CONTRACT OF AFFREIGHTMENT AS EXPRESSED IN CHARTERPARTIES AND BILLS OF LADING. BY T. E. SCRUTTON, M.A. LL.B., OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW, BARSTOW SCHOLAR OF THE INNS OF BRARY LONDON: 27, FLEET STREET. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CIOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. L 6796 NOV 28 1932 PREFACE. THE last twenty years have seen what almost amounts to a revolution in the shipping trade of Great Britain. Steamers have supplanted sailing vessels, and the electric telegraph has placed the centres of commerce throughout the world in immediate communication with each other. At the beginning of this century, sailing ships made their one or two voyages a year, in a not too hurried manner, and the time of those voyages varied enormously as winds and waves might ordain. The master, absent from his owners for long periods, and without any power of speedy communication with them, had in all foreign ports great powers and great responsibilities in the employment of the ship. Shipowners carried goods under the terms of a short and simple bill of lading. The introduction of steam and the telegraph have changed all this. Ocean cables enable the shipowner to direct the employment and transact the business of his ship abroad while sitting in his office in London, and the master has become little more than the chief navigator of the vessel. The mighty power of steam enables regular voyages to be calculated on, while the large amount of capital invested in a steamer and the keen competition it meets compel the shipowner to take advantage of every hour and minute that can be saved in its employ. Shipowners also have gradually protected themselves by exceptions in their bill of lading against every risk of liability for damage to the goods they carry, until the bill of lading contains fifty or sixty |