If you linger late in the living room, that big flat screen will take you places. Johnny and I like to explore YouTube is how it starts and next thing you know we’re watching BBC’s 1970s mini-documentary about Big Jim Collie. This Big Jim fellow makes my drinking look like I’m learning. The film’s modest run time follows Big Jim from his awakening to a 22-mile bike ride through Scotland’s toughest highlands on an unannounced visit with the widow of an old mate – Annie. He’s atop a WW2-looking, single-gear bike and he pedals his way through brush, streams and inclines in button-down and sweater. The kicker? He stops about every four miles for a wee dram from Scotch bottles he’s previously stashed along the route. Oh, and then there are the three pints he downs just before getting to his destination – you “only get the taste of the third bite and then you’re set for the night,” is how he explains. It’s mad or as the natives might say: it’s a right rammy!
Despite my surname, which I’ve always maintained would sound better prefixed with “Von,” I’m not too very German. Mostly Scotch, as a gifted DNA test once showed, thereby capsizing a lifetime of familial assurances that various faults simply sprang from the rigidity of Germanic genetics. Nope. I’ve got about as much German in me as the weight of peppercorn the waiter cranks atop your Caesar salad. Maybe it’s for this reason that Big Jim’s no-fuss, get-on-with-it sort of approach to visiting a friend was appealing. I’ve never much liked planning and gearing up, preferring doing over dithering.
Now dropping things into reverse, I got a call from a guy whose boat had grounded in a quiet cove. He said he’d left it “secure,” which is almost always a preamble to something that wasn’t. Mooring line was too short, tide came up and the boat spent a night trying to climb up the rocky coastline – was my guess, but who knows. What happened then was a local fellow came around, assessed things and successfully tugged this classic plastic back into good water where it was floating at a new mooring.
This is where it gets sticky. Most folks think “salvage” just means “tow it in,” but admiralty law doesn’t see it that way. Basically, the moment someone puts hands on your distressed boat with any hope of saving it – especially if there’s risk involved – they’re potentially entitled to a salvage award calculated (typically) as a part of the boat’s value after the salvage. It’s not a favor. It’s a claim.
I explained this to the owner gently, the way the dockmaster tells you that hard landing isn’t buffing out. “If someone floated her, you may owe them,” I said. “And if you didn’t get a contract signed agreeing to a fixed fee, they might be looking for a pure salvage award. And no,” I assured him, “they’re not going to take your boat – which is just a bad dockside rumor.”
“But I didn’t ask them to!” he said.
“That doesn’t always matter,” I replied and he went quiet. People never like hearing that silence doesn’t equal consent – except, strangely, when it benefits them.
There’s a Big Jim way to deal with that sort of problem: walk up the beach, knock on the door of the guy who pulled your boat off the rocks and hand him a bottle of Glenfiddich. But admiralty law doesn’t run on dram diplomacy. It runs on maritime case law, contracts and a cold calculation of post-casualty value and peril. A bottle might still be appreciated, but I promise you, it won’t help much when the salvage claim arrives in the post.
Maritime salvage is a great thing yielding huge benefits to the boating community. It’s not something a boat owner should fear. Salvors will usually work with an owner’s insurance company to try and resolve the claim and when that effort isn’t successful, many times the salvage will be arbitrated before arbitrators who have a lot of experience in salvage claims – so things are kept fair and decent. Here’s my general advice to boat owners: don’t try and rework the facts. The better ground to corral a salvage claim is often attacking the amount of the claim sought, not whether a salvage was performed. But you do you, as that unfortunate expression goes – these are but mere ramblings and should not be relied upon as legal advice.
Now I’ll spoil the Big Jim documentary by telling you the ending. Despite the alcohol and effort, the widow Annie isn’t home. But, as they say, Big Jim Collie is made of sterner stuff (and apparently brimmed up to the ears at this point), so he’ll just pop across the lar another time. This ending, of course, makes my pained wails of frustration at getting the wrong size fasteners all rather feeble. Really, the only thing to do is to commiserate with my friend Johnny and get on with making them fit – an approach I’m pretty sure Big Jim would sanction.
Underway and making way. ■
John K. Fulweiler, Esq. is a Proctor-in-Admiralty representing individuals and small businesses in maritime matters including personal injury claims throughout the East and Gulf Coasts and with his office in Newport, Rhode Island. He can be reached at 1-800-383-MAYDAY (6293) or john@saltwaterlaw.com, or visit his website at saltwaterlaw.com.
