Barras v Aberdeen Steam Trawling and Fishing Company

JurisdictionUK Non-devolved
JudgeViscount Buckmaster.,Lord Blanesburgh,Lord Warrington of Clyffe,Lord Russell of Killowen,Lord Macmillan,.
Judgment Date17 March 1933
Judgment citation (vLex)[1933] UKHL J0317-2
CourtHouse of Lords
Docket NumberNo. 2.,Case No. 205
Date17 March 1933
Barras
and
Aberdeen Steam Trawling and Fishing Co., Ltd.

[1933] UKHL J0317-2

Viscount Buckmaster.

Lord Blanesburgh.

Lord Warrington of Clyffe.

Lord Russell of Killowen.

Lord Macmillan.

House of Lords

After hearing Counsel, as well on Monday the 28th, as on Tuesday the 29th, days of November last, upon the Petition and Appeal of Thomas Barras, residing at 355, Victoria Road, Torry, Aberdeen, praying, That the matter of the Interlocutor set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Interlocutor of the Lords of Session in Scotland, of the First Division, of the 5th of February 1932, might be reviewed before His Majesty the King, in His Court of Parliament, and that the said Interlocutor might be reversed, varied, or altered, or that the Petitioner might have such other relief in the premises as to His Majesty the King, in His Court of Parliament, might seem meet; as also upon the printed Case of Aberdeen Steam Trawling and Fishing Company, Limited, lodged in answer to the said Appeal; and due consideration had this day of what was offered on either side in this Cause:

It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, in the Court of Parliament of His Majesty the King assembled, That the said Interlocutor, of the 5th day of February, 1932, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby Affirmed, and that the said Petition and Appeal be, and the same is hereby dismissed this House: And it is further Ordered, That the Appellant do pay or cause to be paid to the said Respondents the Costs incurred by them in respect of the said Appeal, the amount thereof to be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments: And it is also further Ordered, That unless the Costs, certified as aforesaid, shall be paid to the parties entitled to the same within One Calendar Month from the date of the Certificate thereof, the Cause shall be, and the same is hereby, remitted back to the Court of Session in Scotland, or to the Lord Ordinary officiating on the Bills during the Vacation, to issue such Summary Process or Diligence for the recovery of such Costs as shall be lawful and necessary.

Viscount Buckmaster.

My Lords,

1

This is an Appeal from the First Division of the Court of Session, recalling an Interlocutor of the Sheriff that awarded to the Appellant the sum of £9 16s. as the amount of wages claimed by him under Section 1 of the Merchant Shipping (International Labour Conventions) Act, 1925. This Act, passed to give effect to certain draft Conventions of the International Labour Conference, provided that:—

"Section 1.—(1) Where by reason of the wreck or loss of a ship on which a seaman is employed his service terminates before the date contemplated in the agreement, he shall, notwithstanding anything in section one hundred and fifty-eight of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, but subject to the provisions of this Section, be entitled, in respect of each day on which he is in fact unemployed during a period of two months from the date of the termination of the service, to receive wages at the rate to which he was entitled at that date."

2

and the Appellant claims the benefit of that Section in the following circumstances.

3

He is a marine engineer, and the Chief Engineer of the Steam Trawler Strathclova, the property of the Respondents. His engagement was in terms of an agreement under which he was engaged from 4th July, 1930, to 30th December, 1930, subject to a provision that the agreement might be terminated at any time before that date at the discretion of the owner. It is common ground that it was not so terminated.

4

On 25th September, while returning to Aberdeen, a collision occurred between the Strathclova and another steam trawler, which, though a fairly severe one, did not prevent the Strathclova from returning to the port of Aberdeen under her own steam on 25th September. The crew, including the Appellant, were paid off on 26th September, and told that the ship would be laid up until the repairs were completed. The repairs were not completed until 20th October, and on the 21st the Appellant resumed his duties. The amount claimed is the amount of wages for the 14 days during which the Strathclova was under repair, and no question arises as to the amount.

5

The claim is resisted by the Respondents upon the ground that the Strathclova was not a wreck within the meaning of the Act of 1925, and that on no consideration can the phrase "wreck" or "loss" within the meaning of the Act be made to apply to the facts of the present case.

6

The question as to the meaning of the word "wreck" in the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 where in Section 158 it occurs in the same context and to provide for similar conditions as those covered by the later statute, was the subject of judicial consideration in the case of the Olympic reported in 1913, P.D. 92. In that case a vessel in the White Star Line, on leaving Southampton for New York, came into collision with H.M.S. Hawke. She returned to Southampton, and proceeded, under her own steam, to Belfast, where she was fully repaired, and after nine weeks resumed her place in the Atlantic service. The Court of Appeal, from whose judgment Lord Justice Kennedy dissented, decided that in these circumstances the vessel was a wreck within the meaning of Section 158. Both Vaughan Williams, L.J., and Lord Wrenbury, who was then in the Court of Appeal, decided the question by considering the word "wreck" in relation to the service of the seamen, and in the words of the last-named Judge:

"the wreck of the ship in this context, I think, is anything happening to the ship which renders her incapable of carrying out the maritime adventure in respect of which the seamen's contract was entered into."

7

The marked contrast between this and the ordinary maritime conception of a wreck is best illustrated in a sentence of Lord J. Kennedy, who said:—

"In my view, said his Lordship, "'wreck' means such disaster caused by collision with some external object, be it stationary, such as a rock, or moving, e.g., another ship or some substance floating in the waves, as destroys her character as a ship, and reduces her practically to the condition which, speaking from memory, I think has been judicially described in the case of a wooden ship, as 'a congeries of planks.'"

8

This case was referred to later in the opinions given in this House in the case of Horlock v. Beal, 1916, 1 A.C. 486, without any expression of disapproval though without expressed assent.

9

The Respondents here have based the main part of their case, as explained in the reasons they have given, upon the ground that the Olympic was wrongly decided, and that the limited and relative meaning there attributed to the word "wreck" is not the true interpretation of the phrase.

10

I do not think that the consideration of that question is open to this House. It has long been a well established principle to be applied in the consideration of Acts of Parliament that where a word of doubtful meaning has received a clear judicial interpretation, the subsequent statute which incorporates the same word or the same phrase in a similar context, must be construed so that the word or phrase is interpreted according to the meaning that has previously been assigned to it.

11

Lord J. James, in the case of ex parte Campbell, in L.R. 5 Chancery Appeals 703, expresses this rule in the following terms:—

"Where once certain words in an Act of Parliament have received a judicial construction in one of the superior courts, and the legislature has repeated them without alteration in a subsequent Statute, I conceive that the legislature must have been taken to have used them according to the meaning which a court of competent jurisdiction has given to them."

12

And this opinion was expressed in a case where the learned Lord Justice himself said it was difficult to bring the interpretation within the words of the Act. The same opinion was expressed by Lord Halsbury in delivering the judgment of the Judicial Committee in the case of Webb v. Outrim, 1907, Appeal Cases 81, and I know of no authority that has in any way weakened the effect of this pronouncement. It is, in my opinion, a salutary rule and one necessary to confer upon Acts of Parliament that certainty which, though it is often lacking, is always to be desired. It is indeed argued that in the Act of 1925 this rule need not apply, because it was an Act whose stated purpose was to give effect to a draft international convention scheduled to the Statute which, by Article 2, had provided that the indemnity against unemployment to the seamen arose only where such unemployment resulted from "the loss or foundering" of the vessel, and that the words in Section 21 must be construed as the equivalent of the phrase in the Convention which the Statute was designed to confirm.

13

To my mind the answer to this is clear. At the time of the passing of the later Act, rights were enjoyed by the seamen under the Act of 1894, which, according to the judicial interpretation of the Statute, conferred upon them wider and more extended rights than those contemplated by the Convention, and I think the conclusion is plain, that the Act, while intending to embody the Convention, did not intend to restrict or limit the rights which our seamen already possessed under the earlier Statute 1894. It does not follow that because the Convention had agreed to something less than that which our seamen enjoyed that we should reduce their rights down to the lower level. I am very clearly of opinion that the word "wreck" must be construed in the Act of 1925 as it was construed in the Act of 1894.

14

There remains the question as to whether the facts of this case bring it within the principle of the Olympic. In other words, whether the damage had been such as to cause such an injury that "the ship cannot continue the adventure in respect of which...

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1 books & journal articles
  • House of Lords
    • United Kingdom
    • Journal of Criminal Law, The No. 48-2, May 1984
    • 1 May 1984
    ...of construction was placed on the statement ofthe rules of interpretation by the majority of the House of Lords inBarras v. Aberdeen [1933] A.C. 402. Lord Diplock, however, statedthat this was"athoroughly unsatisfactory authority": it did not laydown either a rule that amere failure by Parl......

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