Fisher v The Oceanic Grandeur [1972] HCA 51

High Court of Australia Stephen J. Fisher v The Oceanic Grandeur

Cur. adv. vult.

July 25 Stephen J

. delivered the following written judgment:—

In these two actions, which were, by consent, tried together, the plaintiffs comprise the master, officers and crew of the tanker, Leslie J. Thompson, who claim from the owners of Oceanic Grandeur salvage reward for salvage services rendered by them to that vessel. No claim is made in these proceedings in respect of salvage services to the cargo and the plaintiffs are claiming to enforce rights independent of those of the owner of Leslie J. Thompson, that owner itself makes no salvage claim.

Just after 0300 hours on the morning of 3rd March 1970 the tanker, Oceanic Grandeur, while steaming from Dumai in Sumatra to Brisbane, the weather being fair and the sea calm, struck and passed over an uncharted rock in the Torres Straits and immediately began to take water in her forward tanks. Speed was reduced and while the extent of the damage was being ascertained, she steamed on at reduced speed and came to anchor some thirty minutes later in shallow water some five nautical miles to the east.

By the time the vessel had anchored, it was obvious that her hull forward was holed in several places; sea water had entered a large number of her tanks and she had developed a marked list to port and was also down by the stem with the consequence that aft of the break in the fo'c'sle her deck on the port side was awash for some hundreds of feet, her port side rails being completely submerged for a considerable distance aft of the fo'c'sle.

The Oceanic Grandeur is a very large tanker of Liberian registry with Chinese master and crew, being over 58,000 tons dead weight and whose hull is almost 750 feet long and almost 110 feet broad. She has a total of seventeen large tanks, occupying the whole of her hull space forward of the engine room and crew's quarters, which are situated in the stern of the vessel. Of these seventeen tanks, only thirteen are designed for the carriage of cargo. Two tanks in the bows, the fore peak tank in the extreme bows and the deep tank just aft of it, are used only as ballast tanks. The remaining fifteen tanks are placed, from fore to aft, in five sets of three, each set of three comprising two wing tanks, on the port and starboard, and a centre tank, each of the five sets being numbered from fore to aft. Of these fifteen tanks, all but no. 3 port and no. 3 starboard, which are ballast tanks, were filled with crude oil at the time. The three no. 2 tanks are interconnected so that liquid in any one of these tanks, when it reaches a certain minimum depth, will flow freely over baffles into the other two no. 2 tanks; all other tanks are independent units.