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Comment by hnburnsy | Hacker News Reader

So does maritime law override any contract between the ship owner and cargo shipper or does it just mandate that it is included in any contract?

Also does the local pilot bear any responsibility?

>Ever Forward ran aground on March 13 outside the Craighill shipping channel in Chesapeake Bay as it departed the Port of Baltimore with a pilot on board.

From another article...

>The Bay pilot aboard had control of the ship at the time it ran aground. Investigators are still looking at whether it was a mechanical issue or operator error that caused it to leave the channel.

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I have worked nearby to this area - this is a legal principle, but the way this takes force in contracts is either by including a specific clause, or via a pointer to an international shipping standard which pulls in sensible defaults. Something like what happens with force majeure clauses [1]. International shipping contracts are themselves fairly standardised; they're thick and have all kinds of things in them, accreted over literally centuries of practice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure

> they're thick and have all kinds of things in them, accreted over literally centuries of practice.

Oh, so the field is ripe for disruption by a startup that will jettison all that, replace it with arbitrary anti-customer terms under a thin layer of technology, and make bank! /s

Don't forget making everything Wi-Fi enabled. Even if the device has no possible need for it.

And only works with an app, not in a web browser.

And got to be a subscription, even if I want to ship a single container.

Thanks for the insight!

From what I've been told, the local pilots does not bear any responsibility.

While I don't work on container ships, every time a pilot comes onboard our vessel (87m) we maintain control. The pilot provides guidance and assistance in navigation, but the captain or a bridge officer (depending on watch) is in control of the vessel.

I think liability is removed from the pilots because ultimately the ships captain is responsible for the ship, and the officer on watch is actually in control.

I’m curious what would happen if (or when) a ship’s captain/bridge officer “disobeys” a pilot’s order? Does that happen? Are ship captains obligated to comply with the pilot’s instructions or is the pilot offering take-it-or-leave-it guidance that most captains take?

I'm pretty sure the captain outranks the pilot, it would be the pilot disobeying the captains order, which is mutiny.

Can it be regarded as mutiny when the pilot isn't part of the crew?

I would have assumed that the captain is the master of the ship, and the pilot is there to provide guidance.

I would have guessed that if the pilot provides guidance that places the ship at risk the master is then responsible if he follows the advice without recognizing the danger.

You can't contract out of the law. That goes for almost all law I don't see why maritime law would be an exception.

You can waive your legal rights in a contract.

Some legal rights but not all.

The majority of contract case law has developed from shipping disputes. These are business transactions, not consumer ones, so there is plenty of scope to contract/indemnify out of all sorts of protections.

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