SCRAP OUR ARCHAIC

MARITIME LAWS!

by Ole Skaarup, Chairman,

Skaarup Shipping Corporation

From a speech given by Mr. Skaarup at a recent Haight Gardener Holland & Knight maritime seminar.

The challenges facing the maritime industry as we approach the year 2000 are the same that faced us as we approached 1990--and 1980. But they are getting more serious because we have not done much about them:for twenty years!

Right now, our big, big challenge is to keep the U.S. shipping industry alive. We have a lousy market, too many ships in the world fleet and too many shipyards worldwide. The world has twice the shipyard capacity needed to replace the world fleet--that's where you will find the reason for the imbalance in supply and demand.

We have too many regulations and restrictions--without any enforcement--and our U.S.-flag fleet is going down the drain, taking with it our commercial shipbuilding, the U.S.-controlled open registry fleet and the maritime infrastructure.

For years I have been preaching that the rapid erosion of the American maritime industry is caused by our archaic maritime laws and the myopic, single-minded, counter-productive maritime policy: U.S.-flag only! Forget about the shipper, the companies that need water transportation, the consumer and the taxpayer!

When our laws and regulations chase the [oil majors-- and others'] fleets out of the country and force APL and Lykes to sell their companies to foreign control, something is wrong and we have to try to repair it.

To remedy our problem, we have to get rid of all these existing maritime laws and regulations. Scrap them completely and replace them with new up-to-date editions. Small adjustments like we see from time to time will not help.

To build up an American-owned fleet--and we definitely need one--we need to get a change of policy and support a competitive fleet. The flag, the place of build and the nationality of officers and crew do not matter. The fleet has to be competitive with the rest of the world fleet and Washington has to change its maritime policy--180 degrees--to make this possible.

The policy which I recommend will have to give American-owned open registry ships the same privileges afforded our foreign competitors--or better, let us establish an international register, like Norway, Denmark and several other of our competitors.

For example, since its formation ten years ago the Danish International Register fleet has achieved foreign earnings of almost six billion dollars and helped the Danish-owned fleet grow to 600 ships. Remember, Denmark has a population of 4.5 million people--two percent of the U.S. populationóand is about the size of Rhode Island. Yet it has a commercial fleet two or three times the size of ours.

I am not the only one recommending the scrapping of all our obsolescent maritime laws and regulations.

Let me remind you of Vice President Al Gore's plan to reinvent the government. His task force that reviewed the maritime sector reported that "Our maritime policy is a hodgepodge of subsidies, protectionism and regulations that are a mockery of sensible industrial policy." This was followed by a recommendation amounting to a complete deregulation of the maritime industry.

It took only days for the maritime unions and U.S.-flag operators to get a bill introduced to establish a new commission to study the situation. Gore capitulated and the whole thing fizzled.

But let me tell you about another unexpected supporter of change. Former U.S. Maritime Administrator Warren Leback recently wrote:"We should consider repealing our archaic maritime laws and replace them with a simple law that is in step with today'ís world. I do not believe that the existing laws, some dating back to the 19th Century, can be amended to meet todayís requirements. We should start now to provide the nation with a workable maritime law, adapted to the needs of the 21st Century, repealing the existing laws as of midnight December 31, 1999 and moving ahead with a solid, workable law as of 0001 hours on January 1, 2000."

This is exactly what I proposed when Mr. Leback was the Maritime Administrator. I wish he had come up with these ideas when he was in power and had some clout. Now he is the chairman of the Merchant Marine Museum at Kings Point, a good place for our antique maritime laws!

What's YOUR opinion on U.S. maritime laws? E-mail us!