On 11 July 2019, the catamaran LE, while at anchor, was blown away and ran aground on Dokos Island due to negligent navigation by its master. The master sent a distress signal, and the passengers disembarked on an auxiliary boat to the island. The master was able to remove the vessel from the rocky shoal. Vessel N approached the LE to assist it. N's master tried to start the LE's engine, but it did not have enough power because it was damaged from running aground, so he tied it to his vessel and started to tow it. During the towage, the LE also lost its anchor. However, shortly after the start of the tow, vessel N lost its steering ability due to a problem with its hydraulic steering system, causing both vessels to start drifting towards the shore. The LE, having lost its means of propulsion and its means of containment, was again swept away by the winds onto the rocky shoals of the coast, causing further damage and an inflow of water.

LE's shipowner contacted the first claimant to salvage the LE. The salvors came with a speedboat AII, navigated by the second claimant with two divers, one being the AII's owner. They managed to refloat the LE, close its hull breaches, and anchor it in a safe harbour. They made the vessel waterproof and replaced its broken propeller to make it seaworthy. Then, under its own power and the presence of one of the divers aboard, the LE was moved 33 nm to where it would be dry-docked and repaired.

There was no salvage agreement between the claimants and the defendant. The claimants sought EUR 190,739, estimating that the value of the LE was EUR 440,000. The Court of First Instance accepted this value and calculated the salvage reward at EUR 60,000. The parties appealed this decision.

Held: One appeal is dismissed. The two other appeals are upheld. The Court partly accepts the claim of the salvors.

The Court of Appeal heard three appeals: a) the appeal of the LE's owner against the owner, master, and crew of the AII; b) the appeal of the owner, master, and crew of the AII against the owner and insurer of the LE; and c) the appeal of the insurer against the owner, master, and crew of the AII and the owner of the LE.

The Court reviewed the facts in the light of arts 1, 1.a, 1.b, 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 14, 15.1, 17, 24, 29 of the Salvage Convention 1989 and concluded the following.

The Salvage Convention 1989 was ratified by Law 2391/1996 and entered into force in Greece on 3 June 1997, as provided for in art 29 of the Convention. It repealed the Salvage Convention 1910, and the provisions of the CPML regulating the same issues, with the Salvage Convention 1989.

Article 2 of the Convention provides that it covers judicial or administrative proceedings concerning matters governed by it, whenever such proceedings are initiated in a Member State, ie it governs relevant cases brought before national courts, irrespective of the nationality of the salvor or the salvaged ship, and without requiring any other foreign element in the dispute. Moreover, since Greece has not expressed any reservation to the Convention, these provisions also govern inland maritime salvage, that is to say, assistance provided in inland waters and by (or to) inland waterway vessels.

As per art 1.a, a maritime salvage operation means any act or activity aimed at assisting a ship or any other property in danger in any waters, navigable or otherwise. Furthermore, it is divided into: a) salvage governed by law, b) salvage governed by a contract concluded under the influence of the peril and c) salvage governed by a contract prior to the peril.

Salvage, when governed by the Convention, gives rise to a claim for remuneration in favour of the salvor. The statutory right to remuneration under arts 12 and 13.3 presupposes a useful result and limits the claim for remuneration to the value of the salved property.

Salvage contracts may be freely concluded. As referred to in arts 6, 14 and 17, salvage contracts exclude the creation between the parties of legal obligations or claims for remuneration and expenses, unless the contract provides otherwise.

The amount of remuneration shall be determined by the Court on the basis of the criteria set out in art 13.1, irrespective of the order in which they are stipulated. In particular, as is clear from the combined provisions of arts 1, 12 and 13 of the Convention, the conditions required for the right to remuneration to arise from acts of maritime salvage are: a) an act or activity of assistance to a ship or any property in waters fit for navigation or in any other waters, b) a risk of loss or damage and c) a useful result.

As regards the risk of loss or damage to the assisted ship, this must be real, even if not immediate, but expected with probability, existing before the salvage services and not caused by them, without requiring the ship in distress to be incapable of traction or self-propulsion. It is also sufficient that, at the time the assistance was given, the object of the assistance was subject to any mishap or probability of mishap which might have exposed it to loss or damage if the assistance services had not been provided. Risk is an essential building block of salvage, because it defines and differentiates it from towage. The risk also has to be serious, not imaginary, not presumed, not vague, and present, and its existence and degree must be assessed by an overall examination of the circumstances of the particular case.

Circumstances which may indicate a risk are: a) abandonment of the voyage; b) the use of distress signals, where these are used to call for assistance, due to, eg, damage to the ship; c) total or substantial loss of means of propulsion, resulting in a reduction in the ship's ability to cope with difficulties; d) loss of anchors and chains; e) abandonment or preparation for abandonment of the ship; f) immediate requirement for assistance; g) ingress of water into the ship due to damage, etc.

According to art 15.1, if the assistance was provided by several salvors, the distribution of the remuneration between the salvors is based on the art 13 criteria, and distributed among them according to the contribution of each of them to the rescue of the ship in distress, but any salvage agreement prevails over these criteria.

Further, towage is the action paid for by the ship, equipped with propulsion power, for the purpose of transporting, from place to place, either a ship which is generally or partly without propulsion power of its own, or generally any floating structure, by means of a tow which connects the tug to the towed vessel. Towage has the character of a contract of hire for work when the towed vessel has a sufficient crew of its own and is controlling its own movements in the context of its limited activity, and does not follow the tug as an inert body. In other cases, where the towed vessel has no crew of its own and is not in control of its own movements, but is in the care of the tug, under the authority of the master of the towing ship, and follows the tug as an inert body, the towage is characterised as a charterparty. Moreover, the difference between salvage and simple towage lies precisely in the fact that the former presupposes the existence of a serious risk of loss or damage to the ship, whereas in the latter the ship is simply unable for some other reason (deprived of all or part of its own propulsion power) to continue its voyage and requests the assistance of another ship to continue.

In regard to the art 13 criteria for the determination of the remuneration due, the Court considered: a) the risk to which the defendant's vessel was exposed, which was serious, immediate and real, with the possible total loss of the vessel and the consequent pollution of the marine environment, even to a limited extent, which would entail the obligation and expense of cleaning up the area and payment of fines, as well as the removal of the wreck of the vessel; b) the timeliness of the salvage services provided by the claimant's boat and its crew, together with the unsuccessful previous attempt to rescue the vessel by another vessel; c) the readiness with which that boat rushed to assist the vessel in distress and the local proximity in which it was located; d) the diligence, efforts and zeal shown by the crew of that rescue vessel in providing assistance to the ship in distress for its rescue, both through the training, knowledge and experience of its specialised personnel and through the use of its appropriate technical means of salvage equipment; e) the nature and extent of the rescue services provided by the crew of the rescue vessel, who were qualified and experienced and took the appropriate safety measures, primarily during the performance of the underwater work, in view of the above special circumstances; f) the useful result achieved by the claimants in rescuing the vessel in distress, which, although it was stranded in a rocky shoals, lacking any means of propulsion and restraint, having ruptures through which water flowed in, they made it safe and seaworthy so that it could sail on its own for the necessary repairs, accompanied by a crew member of the salvor's vessel, to a yard 33 nautical miles away; g) the significant time that the rescue services of the rescue vessel to the vessel in distress lasted, approximately 20 hours; h) the costs and additional expenses incurred by the first claimant in providing the rescue services to the vessel in distress, for the fuel consumption and the materials used, which he would not have done otherwise; i) the value of the vessel in distress and the assistance vessel respectively. The Court held that the reasonable remuneration to which the claimants were entitled was EUR 40,000.

Applying the provisions of arts 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15 and 24 of the Salvage Convention 1989, and arts of the CPML, which are applicable in addition under art 13.2 of the Convention, the Court ordered the defendant to pay a total amount of EUR 40,000, and in particular: a) to the first claimant the amount of EUR 20,000; b) to the second claimant individually the sum of EUR 10,000; and c) to the second claimant, on behalf of the two crew members, the total sum of EUR 10,000, ie EUR 5,000 to each of them.