Felix Frankfurter

“ Of course, whenever as a consequence of a restraint a vessel or cargo is lost, or even severely damaged, the voyage is frustrated. If the frustration warranty applies in such cases, therefore, its effect is to hold the underwriters free of liability for any total loss, indeed, for most losses, resulting from detainment. ”

“ These riders and warranties, which, when assembled, constitute the policy, are often independently developed. That may explain overlapping provisions such as these. Moreover, it is not hard to understand why extreme caution is exercised in making certain that only war risks are insured against by war-risk riders and saving clauses. For war-risk insurance is often-as it was in this case-written separately from ordinary marine insurance, and it is important to exclude losses, caused by collision or stranding, for example, which are attributable to the ordinary hazards of navigation.↑ See n. ”

“ But as late as January 19, when the Portmar was in Darwin, the owners learned from an agent of the United States Maritime Commission that she would load chrome ore late in February and could be expected in Philadelphia in April. Australia was not, of course, the only place where there was a dearth of shipping at the time, and there is nothing in the record to show that a colonel on the spot had the last word as to the future use of an oceangoing vessel ”

“ It is hard to imagine a military situation serious enough to lead a commander in the field to take it upon himself to requisition a friendly vessel, which is not sufficiently serious to make that requisition of presumptively indefinite, or at least uncertain, duration in his mind. ”

“ In point of time, the Court of Appeals fixed frustration of the voyage as having taken place at Brisbane, during the period of January 5 to 9, 1942. And so the underwriters contend here. Part of the Portmar's cargo, which was unloaded at Brisbane for sorting, was, as we have seen, put back on her there, and she was sent with it to Darwin. It can hardly be maintained that the vessel's trips along the Australian coast after Brisbane, while she was still carrying parts of her original cargo, or the trip from Sydney to Brisbane, constituted a departure from her voyage, whether or not excusable. ”

“ We do not decide that case, but we do hold that if a policy such as this is to provide any appreciable and safely predictable protection over and above that of a policy which does not insure at all against consequences of Allied detainments, coverage cannot be said to have ended before an unambiguous, objectively provable decision has been made by the requisitioning sovereign to cause abandonment of the voyage. ”

“ One envies not merely the perceptiveness of Lord Mansfield in matters of commercial law but his genial means of informing himself. We cannot resort to the elastic procedure by which Mansfield sought enlightenment at dinners with 'knowing and considerable merchants,' [3] nor have we any Elder Brethren of Trinity House to help us. ”

“ This is a suit in admiralty against British underwriters on a war-risk policy issued to cover the Calmar Corporation's S.S. Portmar for a voyage, in the winter of 1941-1942, from the United States to a port or ports in the Philippine Islands and return to an Atlantic or Pacific port in the United States. After the voyage had commenced Australia was duly substituted for the Philippine Islands as the outbound destination. The Portmar was under charter to the United States. ”

“ When Calmar received this news, it chose to act under a clause in the policy providing:↑ 'The truth is that (the) law of marine insurance is nothing more than a collection of rules for the construction of the ancient form of policy and such additions as are from time to time annexed to it. The ancient form dates back at least to the sixteenth century, and it is a document which the late Sir Frederick Pollock characterized, with justifiable asperity, as 'clumsy, imperfect, and obscure' * * *.↑ Lewis v. Rucker, 2 Burr. 1167, 1168.↑ The war-risk rider is not without its slight ambiguity. ”