TNAG-0357-FCO40-393-Registration-of-merchant-shipping-in-Hong-Kong-1972 — Page 138

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CONFIDENTIAL

Sir Hugh Norman-Walker CMG OBE Colonial Secretary HIC: LONG

Hong Kong Department

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE

LONDON SW1

10 March 1972

D13/4

BU imanth

1/13/3.

1. When I was in Hong Kong we had a word about Y K Pao and World Wide Shipping. I thought however that you would like to have a letter confirming what I then told you.

2. In a recent conversation Mr William Lee (Mr Y K Pao's agent in London) repeated that the manning difficulty caused by the shortage of qualified officers was the main problem to be overcome before the Group could register more ships in Hong Kong. He gave the following example of the difficulties he foresaw. If a ship registered in Hong Kong had, with the agreement of the Director of Marine in Hong Kong, an alien as, say, chief engineer and if that chief engineer fell sick while the ship were in, for example, an Australian port, the company would have to seek approval from the Director of Marine in Hong Kong before putting anybody else into the chief engineer's place. All this would take time and time was money when one was dealing with large oil tankers. Mr Lee asked whether it would be possible to obtain some kind of blanket exception perhaps for a ship.

3. The DTI have told us that, as far as the UK is concerned, the position in a nutshell is that they have authority under section 78 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1906 to exempt any chip from any specified requirement of the Merchant Shipping icts, and that under this authority they have granted blanket exemptions of the sort referred to by Mr Lee in circumstances where special considerations applied eg in the case of certain British registered vessels plying in the Persian Gulf where the accommodation on the vessel was well below DTI standards, or for vessels sailing in areas where there was little or no likelihood of attracting duly certificated officers into the statutory positions. The DTI have also told us that under the Merchant Shipping Act 1967 a vessel may to to sea from a place outside the UK with an alien as substitute for one, but only one, of its duly certificated officers, for a period not exceeding 28 days.

CONFIDENTIAL

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