We saw a spike of legal enquiries on this issue back in late 2023 which caused us to release a Blog on the subject in February 2024.
At that time, the pattern was one of Houthi’s launching missiles from Yemen and, in the case of “Galaxy Leader”, boarding and hijacking the ship and crew. To some extent, those risks can be mitigated by armed guards, the anti-piracy measures first implemented as a response to the Somali hijacking epidemic, military escorts and moving closer to the opposite shoreline. These factors and the availability of war risk insurance (at the charterers’ cost) are all relevant considerations when it comes to determining if the Master is acting reasonably by refusing to sail through the Red Sea.
Recent developments however have changed the pattern. Increasingly the Houthi’s are using drones and rocket propelled grenades fired from manned speedboats. It is now more difficult for ships to guard against such attacks. The recent loss of the “Magic Seas” and the “Eternity C” and the tragic deaths of the seafarers caused by those attacks are a sobering lesson of the risks facing ship owners and their crews.
By and large, most ship owners have stayed away from the Red Sea since the attacks of late 2023. Transits through Suez are about half what they once were. However, there may be ship owners who, on the back of increased freights, agreed to proceed on the basis of CONWARTIME. Those ship owners may now be re-assessing whether, in the light of this new pattern of attacks, the risks have increased substantially enough that they can refuse to transit notwithstanding the availability of war risk cover.
Nick Burgess
Partner
