ShippingTime charterers directing that ship take shortest route - master taking longer route to avoid heavy weather - breach of term requiring utmost dispatch and entitling charterers to give orders as to employment of vesselWhistler International Ltd v Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd: HL (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, Lord Hoffmann, Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Hobhouse of Woodborough): 7 December 2000Time charters, in reliance on clause 8 of an amended New York produce exchange form, which required the ship's master to prosecute the voyage with the utmost dispatch and to be under the orders of the charterers as regards employment of the vessel, directed the master to sail from Canada to Japan by the recommended direct route.The master took instead a longer route to avoid heavy weather.

The charterers refused to pay the extra costs thereby incurred and on a London arbitration, the majority held that the owners had been in breach of clause 8 and refused to award the owners sums in respect of the hire deducted.Clarke J [1998] Gazette, 18 March 35; [1999] QB 72 allowed an appeal by the owners on the ground that an order as to route was a navigation matter for the master, outside the ambit of clause 8.

The Court of Appeal [1999] Gazette, 9 June 35; [2000] 1 QB 241 upheld the judge's decision.

The charterers appealed.Timothy Young QC (instructed by More Fisher Brown) for the charterers.

Nicholas Hamblen QC (instructed by Holman Fenwick & Willan) for the owners.Held, allowing the appeal, that a voyage was not prosecuted with the utmost dispatch if the master unnecessarily chose a longer route which caused the vessel's arrival at her destination to be delayed, it being no good reason that he wanted to avoid heavy weather in a ship designed and built to be able to sail safely in such weather; that the choice of ocean route was, in the absence of any overriding factor, a matter of the employment of the vessel rather than navigation, which embraced matters of seamanship; and that, accordingly, since the arbitrators had found that the master had no good reason for disregarding the recommended route, the decision that the owners were in breach of clause 8 would stand.

(WLR)