A cargo insurer has walked away from a US$1.27 million general average claim after a court found the ship's master was not just careless - he was incompetent.
The ruling, handed down on January 12 by Admiralty Registrar Davison, centred on the grounding of the bulk carrier "Happy Aras" off Turkey's Datca peninsula in March 2023. The shipowner, Unity Ship Group S.A., had filed its claim on 28 March 2024, seeking contribution from Euroins Insurance JSC, which insured the cargo interests.
The vessel was eight days into a voyage from Reni, Ukraine to Mersin, Turkey, hauling soya beans when it ran aground on the evening of March 20, 2023. What followed was a salvage and lightering operation that dragged on until mid-June. The shipowner declared General Average, and adjusters pegged the cargo's share at US$1,271,095.89.
Euroins refused to pay. The insurer argued the vessel was unseaworthy because the master lacked competence and the passage planning system was deficient. The Average Guarantee it had signed only covered contributions that were "reasonably, properly and legally due"—and in this case, the insurer said, they were not.
The court agreed, but not on the passage planning point. Both navigation experts testified that while the Passage Plan had shortcomings, the grounding would not have happened if the master had simply followed it. The defects were not causative.
What did cause it was a cascade of failures by the master himself. On the night of the grounding, he took over the watch at 20:00. Within the hour, he had sent the lookout below to make tea - leaving himself alone on the bridge. He failed to plot the vessel's position as required. He missed a critical course change at Way Point 54. The ship ran aground at sailing speed, without any attempt to alter course or slow down.
Then came the cover-up. The court found that entries made in the Deck Log and Engine Log after the incident were false, crafted to deflect blame. AIS data told a different story entirely.
Registrar Davison drew a firm line between negligence and incompetence. Anyone can have a bad day, the court acknowledged. But these errors were "numerous and egregious"—a "complete dereliction of duty." The test, as established in The Eurasian Dream, asks whether a prudent owner would have let the vessel sail with this master, knowing what the court now knew. The answer here was ‘no’.
That left the shipowner needing to prove it had exercised due diligence in hiring and supervising the master. It could not. The beneficial owner's statement mentioned certificates and a positive reference from a previous employer, but the reference was never produced, performance evaluations were not described in any detail, and there was no evidence of any ongoing supervision.
The claim failed. The court noted that had the shipowner cleared the liability hurdle, it would have awarded the full amount sought.
Takeaway: For cargo insurers facing general average claims, this case reinforces that the line between crew negligence and crew incompetence can mean the difference between paying out and walking away—and that shipowners bear a heavy burden to prove due diligence in crew selection and supervision.
