The vast majority of the inquiries I received were for damage to cargo and in most cases I got out the trusty "Claim Denied" stamp and referred the claimant to their insurance broker. Occasionally there would be a pilferage or missing cargo lodgement and again I was often able to deflect these claims by quoting the "shippers load ,stow & count" clause which pretty much protected the carrier from any liability. My only perk back then was a Polaroid camera but there’s only so many snaps you can take of your unsuspecting workmates before that novelty wore off.

After a while it all became a bit of a yawn and I began to hope there would be a serious incident to relieve the monotony, nothing that resulted in a loss of life of course, but something that might involve more than breaking out the rubber stamp. A few months later my prayers were answered when cargo on board one of our ships caught fire on route to Auckland and dozens of containers were jettisoned overboard to save the vessel from going down in flames. My boss told me there was to be a "General Average" and he was going to put me in charge of handling the whole thing. I thought I was being given a golden opportunity to shine, but it turned out to be a hospital pass instead. In essence, a G.A is an ancient maritime law which is founded on the principle that the vessel and goods are parties to the same venture and therefore share exposure to the same risks, which may require sacrifice or the incurring of expense on the part of one for the benefit of the whole.

Therefore every shipper that had cargo on the vessel had to contribute towards to the total damage cost . You can imagine how pleased they were to be told to stump up a percentage of the value of their cargo before we would release the freight. But the ones that got really angry were those that paid their contribution only to find out that their cargo had already been jettisoned to avoid danger to the vessel & crew.

The old saying "be careful what you wish for ; it might happen" was never proved truer when after six months of dealing with hundreds of mainly hostile shippers, countless insurance companies and collating a pile of documents that would full a library I finally closed the file. Shortly thereafter I handed in my stamp pad & Polaroid camera , vowing never to have anything to do with claims again.

The only interesting part of that job was gaining an understanding of how and why modern cargo carrying vessels lose freight overboard which is best demonstrated by the below graphic :

The above illustration highlights the 6, seperate force directions which constantly work to stress "On Deck" stowed containers . Worldwide, around 10,000 containers are lost overboard each year. Many spill their cargo into the ocean , either by storm , poor stowage or jettison on purpose if there is a greater risk to the safety of vessel & crew. If you are really worried about losing your precious cargo overboard you can specifiy "Under deck Stowage" but be prepared to pay a premium rate for preferred stow.

Some cool stuff ends up in the ocean so keep your eyes open when you next you walk along the shore. In 1999, the vessel "P&O Nedlloyd Auckland" encountered a hurricane mid-Pacific that threw a dozen 40ft. containers overboard, two of which were loaded with 80,000 Nike cross trainers. To this day, beachcombers on the North West Shore of the USA still discover good-as-new shoes but struggle to find a matching pair because Nike didn't tie the laces together.