107
CONCLUSIONS
96
97
drafting them or have been raised by the replies of the Governments and which require to be brought to the attention of the Conference.
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Article 1, which is based on the replies of the Govern- ments to Question 3 (ante, p. 68), and which, as already noted, defines the scope of the draft in respect of the vessels on which certificates of competency are to be required for the performance of the duties of master or skipper, chief engineer and navigating and engineer officer in charge of a watch, first restricts the draft to "any vessel engaged in maritime navigation" (thus implicitly excluding vessels engaged in inland naviga- tion), then expressly excludes certain classes of maritime navigation vessels which would not be covered by the expression "merchant vessels" in the wording of the item on the Agenda, and then allows national laws or regula- tions to make exemptions or exceptions in respect of other maritime navigation vessels under 200 tons.
"Any vessel engaged in maritime navigation is intended to include fishing vessels on the same footing as other vessels, in accordance with the views expressed or implied in the replies of the Governments, only two of which definitely proposed to exclude the whole fishing industry as such. Similarly, an all-round tonnage limit of 200 tons for the purposes of exceptions for vessels covered by the draft appeared to respond to the views of the great majority of the Governments, which, following the suggestion of the Thirteenth Session of the Conference, considered that exceptions should be limited to those of a minor character based on the tonnage or type of the vessel, and whose specific proposals or general observations it seemed preferable to reduce to a pure question of tonnage only. In this connection it may be recalled that certain observations of two Governments (India, Japan), which contemplated the possibility of wider exceptions in certain special circumstances, were reserved for further consideration, if necessary, by the Conference itself (ante, p. 78).
44
Article 2, which corresponds to Question 2 in the Questionnaire (ante, p. 61), defines the expressions master or skipper 'navigating officer in charge of a watch", etc. in terms of the duties which they are
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CONCLUSIONS
33
intended to cover, the object of the definitions being to make it clear that the certificates of professional compe- tency are required for the performance of the duties as such, irrespective of the rank of the person to whom they may be entrusted. In view of certain observations contained in the Governments' replies and in order better to give effect to the intentions of the Governments as a whole, a few drafting changes have been made in some of the formulae proposed in the Questionnaire. Thus, navigating officer in charge of a watch has been defined as
any person, not being a pilot, who for the time being controls the navigation of a vessel instead of
any person
who is navigating a vessel Similary, chief engineer has been defined as 44 person permanently responsible for the mechanical propulsion of a vessel ", instead of "
any person perma- nently responsible for the engine-room staff ". Corres- ponding changes have also been made in the definition of "engineer officer in charge of a watch ".
C
+
"
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JJ
any
Article 3, which corresponds to Question 1 (ante, p. 51), lays down the fundamental principle of the draft, and is intended to give effect to the general agree- ment of the Governments that each country should make certificates of professional competency compulsory for the performance of any of the duties defined in the previous Article on board its national vessels. It not only prohibits the engagement of an uncertificated person for any of these duties, but, what would appear to be more important still for the purposes of the draft, the actual entrusting of any of the duties to an uncerti- ficated person.
The only exceptions allowed to these rules are in cases of force majeure (cf. ante, p. 67), which, it has been seen, there could hardly be any ques- tion of endeavouring to define further but which would cover such cases as the illness or death of a certificated officer or other similar exceptional circumstances occur- ring during the voyage. The article specifies that the required certificates are to be “delivered or approved by the national public authority. The object of the words or approved "is twofold, both to meet the case where the certificates may actually be delivered not by the public authority itself but by some qualified
وو
102