Sea of Gold

by Nick Elliott

  I nodded whilst wondering about the justness of such a sweeping statement but it was that word ‘outwith’ which chimed, or jarred perhaps. Hadn’t I seen it in a charterparty clause, one of the additional clauses to the standard form? I fished my laptop out of the overhead storage and pulled up the PDF of the Sophia M charter first. The fixture was on a standard voyage charter form. The clause read, in part: ‘Laytime not to commence outwith normal working hours …’ In other words, the time allowed for loading and discharging must begin within the normal working hours of the port. The meaning of the clause was clear and pretty standard but the wording was cumbersome – an unnecessary double negative. It would normally have been phrased in simpler terms such as: ‘Laytime to commence within normal working hours …’

  Next I pulled up the Med Runner charter. Same clause, same wording. I’d have to wait till I got to the office in Leith to check other charters but ‘outwith’, whilst not exclusively Scots, was nonetheless rarely used elsewhere. I drained my whisky as the flight attendant came up the aisle reciting her mantra: ‘Any rubbish? Any rubbish?’ My neighbour was still droning on. Next to him his wife was snoring softly, minding her own business. The plane began its descent swinging in over the Firth of Forth for its final approach.

  The rain was slanting sideways across the tarmac as we disembarked, the Athens passengers bent double in a futile attempt to shelter from the unwelcoming Scottish night. I collected my bag, hailed a cab and headed for the cosiness of the little flat off Leith Walk that CMM rented for me.

  It was past midnight when I got there. Betty Buchanan appeared at the top of the stairs in her dressing gown and slippers. Jill, her Jack Russell, barked with excitement. I appreciated the welcome I got from the old dear and her little dog. Despite, or perhaps because of, my frequent but irregular visits she always seemed glad to see me and concerned for my wellbeing.

  Mrs B was my landlady and my neighbour. She owned both her own flat and mine above it which came complete with coomed ceilings and a small turret which served as a bedroom. CMM paid the rent but I’d furnished it at my own expense and with Mrs B’s help, not to say interference, but by and large I was pleased with our combined efforts. It was a home away from home.

  ‘It’s a foul night right enough,’ she called down as I clambered up the stairs. ‘There are stovies on if you’d like?’

  Once upon a time Mrs B would have been a fine-looking woman and I still liked to think of her that way, but she’d let herself go over the years, perhaps since Mr B had passed away. She was well into her seventies and overweight, but I believe she still felt like the pretty young girl she’d been and she had an enduring charm about her.

  I carried on up to my flat with Jill dancing around my heels, dumped my bag, and went back down to Mrs B’s for my stovies, armed with the bottle of Famous Grouse I’d brought for her. She poured us each a slug, adding a splash of water, and we chatted as I ate. Living alone, I guessed she was glad of the company.

  Next morning the weather had not improved. The wind was still blowing in off the sea, bringing rain squalls with it. I liked walking in the rain and set off down Leith Walk towards the Links and the sandstone pile on the northern edge of the park that was CMM’s headquarters. There were those in the Club who had long advocated a move to Edinburgh’s New Town on the premise that the resulting improvement to the Club’s image by moving upmarket would somehow be reflected in its fortunes, but most were happy to stay put.

  The truth was that the Club had seen better days. It had been formed in the port’s heyday back in the nineteenth century when Leith was home to shipowners and charterers, traders, agents, brokers, stevedores and chandlers, and all the other contributors to a port’s fortunes. Even in my own time, as a child growing up here, my uncle, as a local agent, would be handling anything up to twenty ships in port at any one time.

  He would sometimes take me with him and I would watch what, to my young eye, were huge ships carrying grains from Canada and South Africa, gliding through the lock before the little harbour tugs pushed and pulled them onto the berth.

  We would board the coaster that carried barrels, butts and hog’s heads of Orkney malt whisky for blending at the Midlothian distilleries. I remember watching from the deck as the derrick operator hauled the first sling-full of barrels up from the hold in such a way as to conveniently strike the hatch coaming, splitting the staves and releasing a stream of the golden liquid into the dockers’ carefully positioned plastic buckets below. ‘Custom of the trade,’ my uncle would laugh.

  And I remember the immense Charolais bulls being herded off the livestock carriers and into the lairage, destined for cross-breeding with those alluring young Aberdeen Angus heifers awaiting them.

  The little ships that the ‘Ingen Johnnies’ chartered would be in for days, while these distinctive characters in their berets and striped shirts argued amongst themselves in their strange Breton-Scots patois. Once they had taken delivery from the ships, they would head off on bikes festooned with pink onions to sell door-to-door across Edinburgh and out as far as the Borders.

  There were always a multitude of ships flying the flags of every nation. My uncle Rob would take me on his rounds greeting the captains like the old friends they were, seeing to their needs and urging the stevedores to get on with the cargo work. He even knew the port’s hookers by name.

  As I walked across the Links I was oblivious to the weather, lost in memories. The place was full of them for me, mostly fond ones, and from another time.

  For years Leith was a has-been port – run down, as rough and ready as in its heyday but its commercial vibrancy long gone. Some places grow old gracefully, but if Edinburgh was the elegant dowager duchess, where Old and New Towns sat comfortably side by side with the ribbon of Princes Street Gardens neatly dividing them, Leith had become something of the old harlot.

  Then overnight, it seemed to me, the dowdy old tart down the road from her posh cousin was reborn. Bonded warehouses became trendy apartments, restaurants and bars. The cobbled streets around the Shore suddenly echoed to the sound of middle-class revellers instead of drunken sailors and their painted whores.

  But to this day the gentrification has never been completed. The businesses strung along Leith Walk reflect waves of immigration over generations. Poles rub shoulders with Chinese. The Italians arrived even earlier. Eyebrow-threading and tattoo shops, tanning and nail salons lie in an untidy sprawl alongside model railway and military clothing stores. An ‘I Love Leith’ poster campaign down the length of the Walk confidently featured various local luminaries but although they might have been born there, it wasn’t clear whether they’d actually stayed on or not.

  My uncle had brought me here from Hong Kong as a child of eight following my parents’ death. I’d been sent to Leith Academy and had spent, or mis-spent, much of my youth hanging out with the sons and daughters of the dockers and Customs officers, tally clerks and chandlers. Was this old port my home? I wasn’t sure, but whether I liked it or not, Leith was a part of me.

  Cameron Leslie greeted me warmly from his post in the lobby of Caledonian House, perhaps because he spied the bottle of ouzo I was carrying. After I’d first brought the old janitor a bottle of the spirit, he’d told me that he and his wife liked to create the illusion of being in Greece with a plate of mezze, and a glass of ouzo to wash it down. Ouzo never tasted quite right to me when drunk outside Greece, but Cameron and his wife must have had vivid imaginations.

  I took the lift to the top floor where Grant Douglas had his office, but before I could see him I had to negotiate my way past Phyllis, his PA. Never mind Cameron, this woman was in effect the gatekeeper for the whole organisation. I presented her with a bottle of Greek olive oil. True to my Scottish roots, I didn’t make a habit of dispensing gifts to all and sundry lest they begin to think it their due. This time only Betty, Cameron and Phyllis were blessed with my largesse. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mr McKinnon but you are twenty minutes late for your appointm
ent you know.’

  ‘Yes I am aware of that Phyllis, but you should know by now I operate on Greek time, which allows considerable flexibility in matters of punctuality.’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with Scots time might I ask?’

  We would have carried on sparring but Grant put his head round the door.

  ‘Phyllis, you’re wasting your life with this guy. He’s an idle reprobate.’

  Grant and I had an understanding. He acknowledged that as a freelance I enjoyed a certain level of independence that permitted me to say what I thought. At the same time, we both understood that I depended on the Club’s support for much of my business.

  We went into his office and I sat down at a round table positioned by the window and away from his desk. Like others in positions of power and authority, Grant couldn’t resist having two chairs on the opposite side of his own desk adjusted to a height lower than his own, the theory being that this arrangement would induce a sense of insecurity in the guest, thus placing Grant at some undefined advantage. But it was such a transparent trick that, if anything, it simply revealed Grant’s own insecurities. At least, that’s what I’d told him when he’d first tried it on me.

  ‘The Sophia M was the victim of an old-fashioned charterparty fraud and I believe that falls within her Freight, Demurrage and Defence cover,’ I began.

  ‘Is that all you have to tell me?’ Grant sighed. He was tall, with that kind of lean, rangy cowboy frame common in some Americans. I knew he was the wrong side of sixty but if I hadn’t I’d have put him in his early fifties. His hair was cropped short and hadn’t yet gone grey, unless he was dyeing it of course. But he was tanned, fit-looking and never short of female company, which made me wonder how he found time for sitting behind a desk.

  ‘No, I came over here to discuss my retainer, and to attend your claims review meeting of course, but I thought in the meantime I’d tell you how I felt about this particular case.’

  I knew very well that Grant wouldn’t be interested in such a relatively small claim as that presented by the Sophia M’s misfortune, but if his ears pricked up it might tell me he knew something that I only suspected – a link between this and other fraud cases on either the CMM’s or other P&I Clubs’ books. Grant sat on various inter-Club committees – cosy arrangements in our little world ensuring that, without giving too much away, we all knew what was going on. But if Grant did know of any such connection, he wasn’t letting on.

  I put my theory to him about the use of the word ‘outwith’ in the Laytime clause but as I spoke it somehow came across as farfetched, even to my own ears.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ he drawled, pausing to add sweetener to the coffee Phyllis had just delivered. ‘You think that because you’ve found just two fixtures, which have turned out to be fraudulent, and both contain this “unusual” wording, there must be some kind of international conspiracy out there, or even, given the very Scottish use of the word, here in front of our very noses.’ He got up from his desk and walked over to the table I was sitting at, sat down and placed his coffee down in front of him. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I persisted adding sugar to my own coffee. ‘It struck me as odd but it wasn’t just that clause. It was something else, but I can’t put my finger on it.’

  ‘You can’t put your finger on it,’ he repeated. He sat back and looked at me the way a rich American like him might appraise a horse that was already past its prime but that he’d just decided not to buy anyway.

  ‘Sounds to me like one of your triumphs of hope over reason, Angus old son. Don’t you think we have bigger things to worry about? Wait till the case review tomorrow and you’ll see what occupies the claims boys on a daily basis. We have oil pollution, crew negligence, stevedore injury, collision liability and cargo claims aplenty before I lose sleep over your half-baked conspiracy theory. Tell Mavritis we’ll cover him for his legal expenses including your fees in accordance with his FD&D cover, but any further compensation depends on our negotiations with cargo underwriters.’

  Christos would have to make do with that. I’d already warned him the Club might not view the claim sympathetically since there was a degree of contributory negligence on his part in entering into such a dubious contract in the first place.

  I decided to back down for now. ‘Okay, forget I mentioned it Grant, and keep it under your hat will you? I agree it’s an outlandish notion. You know how it is when you’re flying and you’ve had a couple of drinks. Anything seems possible.’

  ‘Sure Angus. Anything seems possible. Strictly entre nous, I assure you.’

  We discussed one or two other matters including my annual retainer, which was up for review and which he’d been avoiding for months. We settled for a paltry increase and I left him to get on with some plans that were spread across the table and which I’d been trying to read upside down.

  ‘I’m having a new garage built at the farm in case you were wondering,’ he explained to save me twisting my neck any further. Grant’s farm was a five hundred-acre estate complete with a renovated sixteenth-century tower house deep in Liddesdale, a remote valley in the Scottish Borders, which he claimed, as only an American would, was the original ancestral home of his particular branch of Clan Douglas. I made good my escape before he could treat me to a lengthy discourse on the history of the Border reivers.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Club’s claims review meetings were held monthly – sometimes more frequently depending on the urgency of matters to be discussed. I was expected to attend but ducked out whenever I could find an excuse. They were held in the boardroom and attended by a dozen or so on-staff lawyers and their bosses representing the six syndicates that the Club was divided into for ease of administration.

  My cases were spread across all the syndicates with a natural bias towards claims involving the Club’s Greek members, generally considered to be the most troublesome but lucrative part of the Club’s business.

  There were fifteen of us in all including Grant who was chairing it and Phyllis taking minutes. The meeting went on all day with each claims manager running through his or her respective agenda, being those cases that warranted discussion either with a proposal to settle or needing a group debate on the best way to move the claim forward.

  I looked around the table. As well as the six syndicate claims managers, the syndicate heads were there too, including Claire Scott.

  Grant opened the meeting with a little speech which began with a quote he was fond of repeating. It had originally been made by an economist at a climate change conference though Grant preferred to claim it as his own.

  ‘Colleagues,’ he began. ‘Some of you might have heard me say this before, but for those who haven’t, let me repeat it.’ We all had but that didn’t deter him. ‘Ninety per cent of world trade is based on international sea transport, which is handled by some sixty to seventy thousand ships. You could say that without this transport, one half of the world’s population would starve and the other half would freeze.’ He paused to allow for the murmurs of appreciation from his sycophants. The statement was quite true of course. International shipping carried much of the world’s annual cereal crops and fertilisers as well as most of its oil and gas, not to mention its iron ore, copper, coal and manufactured goods. Eight billion tons of cargo a year was the conservative estimate.

  Grant went on, reminding us all of the CMM’s illustrious history, today’s challenges in the face of such a competitive business environment, and finally the meeting got underway. As I listened to their recaps and the debates that followed, I reflected on what an indictment it all was of an industry that still fell far short when it came to safety and loss prevention. On the other hand, we were all making a good living out of the mishaps that befell the ships, their crews and cargoes, and the human fallibilities that were almost always, in one way or another, the cause of the claims and counterclaims we were discussing.

  I knew all these people and had worked with
most of them. An exception was James Hamilton-Hunter, the Club’s highly regarded senior underwriter. Being based in London he didn’t usually attend these meetings, and since he wasn’t directly involved in the claims side of the business I didn’t have much to do with him. He was in his early fifties; tall, dark-haired and immaculately dressed, he radiated charm, often punctuating his speech with gales of laughter which encouraged those around him to join in, even if they couldn’t see the joke. Hamilton-Hunter was blessed with the looks and charisma of a film star too, and he knew it. He had a spontaneity about him that was attractive and I could understand why some the women in the office got excited at mention of his name. But right now he looked bored. I suspected he was used to attending only meetings where he was in the chair.

  Now he spoke. ‘I am persuaded to the view that we should offer, as a full and final settlement, one hundred and sixty-four thousand, three hundred dollars, without prejudice, and not a dollar more,’ he said in connection with an injury to stevedore claim under discussion. To assert his authority he’d overridden the claims manager whose case it was and the manager’s syndicate head, who happened to be Claire Scott, and who studiously ignored him.

  They droned on. Few of them had field experience and they didn’t like to be reminded of the fact. Theirs was a world of legal niceties and gentlemanly negotiations. I studied the stats that Phyllis had provided along with the briefing notes on each claim under discussion. Fraud could take many forms but often would show up under the Freight, Demurrage & Defence heading, where owners would be seeking recompense for the cost of defending a claim for loss of freight monies or charter hire payments. The Sophia M was a case in point. Maritime fraud could cover a multitude of sins, and one thing was sure from these briefing notes: it was alive and well, and on the increase. There were at least nineteen current cases on the Club’s books which fell into the fraud category.