Essay by Bryan M. Roddick
Some twenty-three years ago, on my first visit to New Orleans, a distinguished lawyer arranged a study visit to The Topper 11-a jack-up rig lying offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. The helicopter landed on one of the legs which protruded about eighty meters above the sea. Even at that tender age, I was a sufferer of vertigo and because the only way to the barge was an outside grill staircase, I never made it to the educational area and remained up high with the helicopter.
In the hour or so I had to wait for my colleague's return, I had time for reflection and to realize that the monster I was standing on had been towed from its building site to that exposed location. Those thoughts were the start of my appreciation of towage insurance. By coincidence, or maybe not, it was the lawyer who invited me to visit the rig, now even more distinguished, who invited me to address the Tulane Conference on the subject of towage insurance.
I do not think anyone has given a paper on Towage Insurance since my father addressed the International Union of Marine Insurers in Paris in 1976. The title of his lecture was Pitfalls in Towage Insurance. Not much has changed with the passage of time-but some of the pitfalls have become more complex. It would almost be true to say that the insurance of towages was something of a family business, as my grandfather was probably the pioneer of this class of insurance at Lloyd's. When my turn came to underwrite these risks, I had listened for hours to brokers arguing with our syndicate in order to obtain the best price and conditions for their clients. Very recently, I changed roles-from underwriter to broker. I hope that I am now well placed to ensure that my clients do get the best prices and conditions.
My comments will relate to tows in exposed water, rather than to routine barge traffic in inland and sheltered waters. The former tend to be placed in the international markets while the latter, Mississippi barge trains, for instance, tend to be written domestically. Tows in exposed waters are not just long ocean tows, but also coastwise tows in potentially stormy conditions. For example, a recent tow up the western Norwegian coast was delayed for over fourteen days awaiting a weather window of less than gale force.
About the Author
Bryan M. Roddick. Director of Underwriting, CI DeRougemont, London, England.
Citation
70 Tul. L. Rev. 679 (1995)