Too tall to ship

A German commercial manager fixed eight specially designed “blade containers” from Spain to a port in southern Italy. Four of these containers were to be stowed under deck and four on deck in two tiers. During loading operations, the Spanish authorities refused to allow the vessel to sail with the four containers on deck due to insufficient visibility from the bridge. The permitted height of deck cargo was 5.15 metres and the containers as stowed were 5.7 metres high. As a result, two containers had to be unloaded and could not be transported.

This resulted in a loss of freight of USD25,000. This amount was claimed by the owner from the commercial manager, who had prior knowledge of the loading capacity of the vessel and, should, therefore, have known that booking the containers with these dimensions would put the stack above the permitted line of sight from the bridge.