What are the essential clauses of a bill of lading?

The essential clauses of a bill of lading are: the parties to it, the ship, the voyage, the goods shipped, the delivery, the freight.

Some of them are expressed in almost identical terms in all adopted forms of bills of lading; others appear much more detailed in bills for goods shipped in a general ship, which, as already explained, is due to the fact that the bill of lading being then the sole written contract between the shipper and the owner, all the conditions agreed upon between the parties for the carriage of goods must appear therein.

Extra clauses, relating to special conditions im­posed on the shipper, are daily met with in bills of lading, each and all intended towards lessening the ship’s responsibility, avoiding delay and securing payment of freight and charges

Every steam navigation company may be said nowadays to have its particular form of bill of lading, whose conditions, though varying from time to time, must be accepted and complied with by shippers. It is, therefore, hardly possible to refer to each and all of them in this limited work, although one may get easily acquainted with them by actual practice. We must content ourselves with making clear the general and most essential points in a bill of lading.

Parties.-

The parties to a bill of lading are three, viz.: the shipper, the consignee, and the shipowner.

The consignee, however, being no contracting party, is not essential to the validity of the act. It often occurs that there is none mentioned in the bill, as will hereafter be shown.

The shipper’s name is inserted at the head of the bill, after the usual introductory wording:

Shipped in good order and condition by whereby the owner acknowledges his having received the goods on board.

The consignee, if any, should be mentioned in the delivery clause; and as to the owner, he is usually represented by the captain or other authorized agent.

In and upon the good ship The name of the ship and ship’s master, the port where she is lying, and that to which she is bound, constitute the essential terms of the clause, to which, however, others are often added in bills for general ships, whereby full liberty is left to the ship to call at other ports for any object whatever before proceeding to her destination, to tranship the goods to their destination by another vessel, to sail without pilots, etc., etc.

Clauses as to Goods.-

The clause concerning^– the goods shipped comes next, bearing a full description of their nature, weight or measure, with the addition of marks and numbers of the packages, usually noted in the margin of the bill of lading.

The declaration of having received the goods in good order and condition and the consequent obligation, subsequently expressed, of delivering them in like good order and condition, is sensibly lessened in its importance by an additional clause, now adopted by almost all ship-owners and inserted at foot of the bill of lading, stating : weight, quality, quantity, value and contents unknown.

The captain, in his owner’s behalf, declares by such a clause that he has not ascertained the condition of the contents of the packages, or the weight and measure of the goods shipped, which would be, in fact, almost impossible to do, and there­fore declines liability in many cases of damage and short delivery.

Such a waiver of responsibility is sometimes attempted by the following addition to the clause: not accountable for short delivery; but short de­livered goods are always claimed from ship-owners.

Should the goods or part of them be shipped in an apparently damaged state, or in a bad condition of packing, a note to that effect is to be made by the captain on the bill of lading, which ceases then to be a clean bill of lading.

Delivery.-

No mention as to the time or mode of shipping the goods is made on the bill of lading, nor could it reasonably be otherwise, considering that the bill is but a receipt, which comes into effect when the goods have already been shipped.

When goods are shipped on a chartered vessel, the operation is regulated by the provisions of the charter party, and in the case of a general ship, the follow­ing is the course usually adopted: the ship-owner, wishing to employ his ship without binding her under a charter party, puts her on the berth for a determined voyage; that is, announces publicly to the trade that she is ready to receive goods for certain port or ports, and appoints the date of her sailing.

Persons willing to ship goods in her, arrange freight rates, tonnage, and all other conditions, with ship’s agent or company’s appointed officer; get a shipping order for the captain, and send goods on board.

The ship’s cargo is thus formed, which is sometimes a cargo in bulk, shipped by one or several merchants under one or several bills of lading; and still oftener, a general cargo-i.e., a mixed cargo composed of separate packages-‘is is always the case with regular liners, each parcel of goods being forwarded under a particular bill of lading.

When the date of the ship’s sailing has been pre­viously announced, she receives cargo up to the appointed time; when no such term has been fixed, the owner may delay her sailing till the cargo is completed.

Under such circumstances no question can arise as to the detention of the ship at port of loading, and there is no reason for fixing lay days, demurrage, or any other condition respecting the shipment of goods.

On the contrary, the clause as to delivery of the goods at port of destination is a most essential point in a bill of lading.

The clause should point put in all cases the person or persons to whom the goods are to be delivered ; it may also bear, and does often bear, additional pro­visions as to the time and mode in which the delivery is to be effected. The first part of the clause usually runs thus : To be delivered in like good order and condition.

The bill of lading, it must be remembered, is an instrument of possession, and, during the voyage, represents the goods shipped, just as the warrant re­presents the goods lodged in a dock warehouse.

Any person in the lawful possession of a bill of lading is therefore, considered as the lawful owner of the goods, for which it has been issued, and invested with all the rights and liabilities attaching to them under the document.

Like a warrant or any other instrument of credit, a bill of lading may be either deposited with a creditor as a security for money advanced, or transferred to a buyer by means of endorsement, and the property of the goods will be thereby either mortgaged or assigned.

Acting upon this principle, the owner declares in the bill of lading that the goods shall be delivered unto the consignee or his assigns, viz., to the person to whom they are addressed by the shipper, or to the persons to whom the property of the goods may have been transferred, through the assignment of the bill.

When a merchant is unable to insert the name of the consignee at the time the bill of lading is made out, a bill to order is drawn up, wherein the consignee’s name is superseded by the words: shipper’s order, or simply, order; it being thus understood that the goods shall be delivered to whomsoever presents to the captain, at port of destination, the bill of lading duly endorsed in blank by the shipper.

By such a simple arrangement as a bill to order, the merchant is enabled to sell his goods while sailing, and a parcel of mer­chandise may change hands several times before arrival at destination.

The conditions agreed upon between the shipper and the owner, concerning the time and mode in which the goods are to be delivered at port of destination, when determined by a charter party, are sometimes repeated also on the margin of the bill of lading for the receiver’s guidance.

In the case, however, of a general ship, wherein each parcel of goods has been shipped under the sole bill of lading, such conditions must actually be stated in the document; it is safer to include all important conditions of the charter in the bill of lading.

The usual clause, now adopted for the purpose by steamship-owners and navigation companies, is: that the consignee, or his agent, must be ready to receive the goods under his bill of lading, along ship’s side, as soon as the ship is ready to unload, and as fast as she can deliver.

Should he fail to do so, the captain is fully empowered to discharge them into hulk or lighter, land them on a wharf or lodge them in a warehouse, for the account and risk of the receiver; having, of course, a lien on them until freight, lighterage, wharfage, carriage, warehousing, or any other charge incurred, on account of such delay, be paid by the receiver.

It is easy to be seen that no lay days need be appointed under such circumstances, since the dis­charge of a single package, or of a limited number of packages, cannot reasonably be the cause of detention for the ship, when the captain is empowered to leave the goods ashore at receiver’s risk and charge.

In most ports the discharge of general cargoes, especially from steamers, is effected under the captain’s or ship’s agent’s care, who delivers the goods to the receivers on payment of charges.

This is done, of course, for the sake of saving time and trouble; since, pot knowing the place where every single parcel lies the ship’s hold, it would be next to impossible for each consignee to be ready to receive his goods at the moment when his turn of delivery comes.

The system does not work very well, however, with bulk cargoes under several bills of lading. Each parcel often consists of a number of tons, for which ship’s agent would often be embarrassed to find accommodation either in lighter, craft, warehouse or other place should the consignee fail to be ready for receiving his part of the cargo.

This must frequently happen when the several parcels, being different in kind or quality are stowed in the hold one beneath the other, with a simple partition between each; since every receiver would then be forced to wait for his turn, keeping everything ready for the landing of his goods; and this might not be possible or convenient for the merchant.

To protect themselves against damage arising from detention at various ports under such circumstances, ship-owners have been for some time past in the habit of appending demurrage clauses to bills of lading for parcels of bulk cargoes, such as:-

Not more than———- running days to be allowed for discharging the whole cargo, or demurrage to be paid; or others to the same effect.

The application of these conditions has hitherto given rise, however, to serious troubles, owing to the difficulty of ascertaining the extent of delay im­putable to each receiver, and various clauses have been contrived to secure the payment of demurrage.

Such clauses form, however, as already remarked, quite an exception; and, generally speaking, no lay days or demurrage clauses are to be found in bills of lading.

A good system, which prevents trouble and secures an advantageous dispatch in the discharge of a vessel, is now acted upon in some British ports with the employment of master porters, the practical results of which claim the attention of maritime communities.