Utmost despatch
The obligation to prosecute the voyage with all reasonable speed, its place in the time charter employment clause, and how slow steaming clauses neutralise it.
Utmost despatch, also written due despatch, is the obligation on an owner and master to prosecute the chartered voyage with all reasonable speed. In a time charter it is an express term of the employment clause, and it is the duty that a slow steaming instruction runs directly against.
In The Hill Harmony [2000] UKHL 62 the House of Lords treated the obligation as an independent duty rather than merely a gloss on the charterer’s orders: absent a usual route or a maritime reason for departing from it, utmost despatch of itself requires the shortest and quickest route. That produces the structural tension the BIMCO clause library exists to resolve, because the same charter that lets a charterer order reduced speed contains the clause obliging the ship to hurry.
The contractual answer is deeming. The BIMCO Slow Steaming Clause for Time Charter Parties 2011 provides that proceeding at reduced speed under the clause with due diligence constitutes compliance with any obligation requiring the vessel to proceed with utmost or due despatch. The full article will cover the term’s origins, its relationship to the bill of lading holder who is not bound by the charter, and the remedies for breach. See slow steaming and time charter party .