Port State Control: An Important Concept in the Safety of Life at Sea, the Protection of the Marine Environment, and of Goods in Transit

Historically, the power to regulate merchant ships resided with the nation where the ship was registered. When seaborne trade was geographically limited, this method of control was somewhat effective. With the expansion of the European empires, the ability of nations to regulate ships flying their flag was diminished by distance, and they would appoint consuls, or merchants, to represent them in distant ports, and they would advise masters on commercial matters, and on local ship-repair facilities. Lloyd’s of London, which, as insurers, had a financial interest in arranging reliable repairs to damaged ships, began in the 1740s, to hire shipwrights to represent their interests in overseas ports, and to appoint surveyors at major ports along the trade routes of the British Empire. Other nations, such as France, Germany, Norway, and the United States adopted this system, which worked fairly well for 200 years. However, in 1967, the Arab-Israeli War resulted in the closure of the Suez Canal, lengthening oil supply-lines of the Western industrial nations, as ships were forced to travel from the Middle East using the longer route past the southern tip of Africa. As a result, freight rates increased dramatically, prompting the ordering of hundreds of ships to take advantage of these increased rates. When the Suez Canal re-opened in 1975, too many ships were chasing too few cargoes, and freight rates plummeted. Many shipowners went bankrupt, and those who survived had to drastically cut their costs. Most of a shipowner’s costs are ‘hard costs’ (mortgage, insurance, fuel, spare parts) over which there is little control. The only ‘soft costs’ are registration and crewing. Many shipowners removed their ships from the high-cost industrial nations, and re-registered them with lower-cost ‘flags of convenience’ (FoC). By registering with a FoC, the shipowner was able to replace the highwage unionized workforce of industrialized nations with crew from nations with low wages. This labor outsourcing came at a hidden cost as many of the ‘new’ crews were inexperienced, and inadequately trained. This led to several accidents, many involving serious oil-pollution, such as Torrey Canyon (1967) and Argo Merchant (1976), and an awareness that safety standards in merchant shipping were in serious decline. In a related development, the classification