International conventions

Ships historically made untrammeled use of the vast ocean surface. The necessity of coming into port gave shore authorities the opportunity to exact certain payments, but, until regulation began to appear in the middle of the 19th century, owners and captains were free to do as they pleased in building and operating their ships. As maritime nations began to realize that accidents at sea were preventable by adherence to rules for the building and operation of ships, a body of regulations began to develop under the powers of individual states to make laws for their own citizens (and for others within controlled waters). However, given that ships of all nations were free to use the ocean, diversity of rules was a serious problem, with maritime trade readily falling into the hands of the ships that obeyed the least onerous rules.

The practice of enforced observance of local regulations continues, but since the late 19th century a series of agreements among maritime states has brought near-uniformity to regulations governing ship operation and aspects of ship design and equipage that bear on safety. Nearly all the world’s maritime states, for example, have adopted the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (known as COLREGS). These were originally based on British rules formulated in 1862 and made internationally effective after a series of international meetings culminating in a conference at Washington, D.C., in 1889. The rules specify in great detail how ships must navigate in respect of each other, what lights must be shown, and what signals must be given in accordance with circumstances. Any infringement of this international code of conduct is accepted in all maritime courts of law as prima facie evidence of liability in case of collision. Similarly, the internationally accepted requirements for the protection and safety of life at sea, as far as the ship and its equipment are concerned, are embodied in the International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea (known as SOLAS). The sinking of the liner Titanic in 1912 gave rise to a general desire to raise the standards of safety of life at sea. Although a convention was drawn up in 1914 requiring certain minimum standards for passenger ships, it did not become fully operative because of the outbreak of World War I.

The advent of the United Nations after World War II brought into being a permanent international body, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), an arm of the UN whose purpose is to produce and modify international conventions in three categories: safety, prevention of pollution, and liability and compensation following accidents. The IMO has produced a regulatory literature too extensive to detail here, but four conventions that have the greatest bearing on ship operation can be mentioned. The International Convention on Load Lines of 1966 emerged from the British Merchant Shipping Act of 1875, which provided what was known as the Plimsoll load line on the ship’s side, indicating the maximum depth to which a ship could legally be loaded. In order to protect the competitive position of British ships, the Merchant Shipping Act of 1890 required all foreign ships leaving British ports to comply with the load-line regulations. This led to the adoption of load-line rules by most maritime countries, and the International Load Line Convention of 1930 was ratified by 54 nations. The new convention of 1966 came into force in July 1968 and allowed for a smaller freeboard (vertical distance between the water and the deck) for large ships while calling for more stringent protection of openings in decks and superstructures. The Convention on International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea and the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea were drawn up in 1972 and 1974, respectively. In 1973 and 1978 the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) came up with regulations that cover internal arrangements of tankers in order to minimize oil spills following hull ruptures.

IMO regulations do not go into effect until they have been ratified by a sufficient number of maritime states. In turn, they are not enforced by the regulatory arm of a maritime state until they have also become the law of that land. In the United States, for example, they must become federal law by the usual passage through Congress and the Executive. They are thereafter found in the Code of Federal Regulations and are enforced by the United States Coast Guard within U.S. waters. The enforcement functions of the U.S. Coast Guard are largely focused in a Certificate of Inspection that is required for commercial shipping under its jurisdiction. The owner of a vessel required to have this certificate must submit certain construction plans and other data for approval during the design and building stages. Inspectors from the Coast Guard may visit the vessel while it is under construction. The certificate, required before operation of the ship, is posted aboard as tangible proof that federal law has been complied with. The certificate also lists safety equipment that must be carried and specifies the minimum crew that must be employed.

Ship classification

In most maritime states, nongovernmental regulatory bodies are empowered to carry out such legally mandated actions as assigning load lines and to publish rules for ship design that must be complied with for insurability. However, since their functions are to establish an insurability class for new ships whose owners opt for this service and to survey the ships periodically for continued compliance over their lifetime, they are more accurately described as classification societies.

The leading classification society, operating in almost every country in the world, is Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, which began its work long before any national legislation existed for the performance of its purposes. The history of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping can be traced back to 1760. The society was reconstituted in 1834 and again in 1914. Lloyd’s operates in most maritime countries, often in cooperation with classification societies established by other nations. These include the American Bureau of Shipping, originally established in 1867 and resuscitated as a result of the large volume of merchant ships built in the United States during World Wars I and II; the Bureau Veritas, which was founded in Antwerp (Belg.) in 1828 but moved its headquarters to Paris in 1832; the Norske Veritas, established in Norway in 1894; Germanischer Lloyd, founded in Germany in 1867; and Registro Italiano Navale, founded in Italy in 1861.