CO129-536-10 Need for leglisation concerning number of certificated officers carried on passenger ships 18-11-1931 - 15-6-1932 — Page 57

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GENERAL SURVEY

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and to the fact that agreements have been concluded between individual Governments to avoid such results, while the German Government considers that fundamental ideas as to the treatment of foreign vessels in territorial waters differ so much that it is doubtful whether a decision on the matter could be arrived at by the Conference and whether it would be ratified even if it were adopted. For the rest, Norway observes and this may also be implied in one or two other replies (e.g. Denmark, Sweden)

that foreign authorities should be empowered to detain a vessel if the non-compliance with the Draft Convention is of such a character as to be an obvious danger for the safety of the vessel at sea ; Finland, that the regulations in that country empower the authorities to inspect foreign vessels from the standpoint of the capacity of their officers; Australia, that it is the established principle in maritime practice not to interfere with foreign vessels except in cases of obvious unseaworthiness, and that intervention in the case of such vessels should be sparingly exercised and then only in co-operation with the consul of the country concerned; Italy, that in cases of doubt as to the regularity of a certificate of capacity the question should be submitted to the consul of the country where the certificate was granted; and France, that in any case the Draft Convention should not authorise the detention of a foreign vessel, but that if breaches of its rules are found on such a vessel the matter should be referred to the consul concerned, it being left to the Government of the country of the vessel to investigate the matter and take such measures as are required.

In the light of these replies it seems clear that it would be difficult to include in the Draft Convention provisions for foreign vessels on the lines of those which have been proposed above for national vessels. In any case, foreign vessels belonging to countries not ratifying the Convention must, it would appear, be left entirely out of account, and the question of the supervision of foreign vessels for the purposes of the draft only arises in so far as they belong to a country which has ratified the Convention and visit the ports of another ratifying country. So far as such vessels are concerned, the Draft Convention, if it contains the above proposals relating to national

QUESTION 6

vessels, will already have subjected them to inspection by the national authorities of the country to which they belong, and thus, theoretically at any rate, they should as a rule have already complied with the provisions of the draft before they visit the foreign port, so that presn- mably there would, generally speaking, be no breaches of the rules for the foreign authorities to find.

All the same, it may happen, owing to supervening circumstances for example, that a serious breach of the rules of the Draft Convention might exist on a foreign vessel which is in the port of another ratifying country. In such cases what is to be the position of the authorities of the country of the port? It is well known and is, indeed, implied in a number of the replies summarised above that maritime countries do reserve to them- selves, and do in fact exercise to varying extents, some right to supervise foreign vessels in territorial waters in respect of matters affecting their seaworthiness. This situation in any case already exists quite indepen- dently of the Draft Convention, and if, as the general tendency of the replies suggests, it should be left untouched by the draft, it will continue to exist after the Draft Convention is adopted. As a matter of fact, if the Draft Convention is adopted and contains proposals on the lines of those which have been considered in the preceding pages, it might be expected to create between ratifying countries a closer interest in the safety of each other's vessels from the standpoint of the rules contained in it than is the case at present in the absence of a special international Convention laying down uniform rules for maritime countries generally.

In these circumstances the Draft Convention might perhaps endeavour to facilitate relations between the ratifying countries in this matter of supervision, with a view to closer collaboration in the international promotion of the objects of the draft, by providing that, if the authorities of a country which has ratified the Convention find a breach of the Convention on a vessel belonging to another ratifying country, the matter should be referred to the consul of the latter country, so that the authorities of that country could take the necessary measures. It has been seen above that a clause on these lines appears to have been in the mind of one or two

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