The speed boat F, owned by the defendant, lost power while west of Serifos Island. The defendant informed the Port Authority of Milos that his vessel was adrift due to mechanical failure. The authorities searched for the boat. When it was spotted, the authorities ordered two nearby tankers, D and SC, to reroute to the spot. Tanker D came alongside the F, tethered it, and took the defendant and the second passenger on board for first aid. The claimant, a fisherman, offered to help tow the F to a safe port. The defendant contacted the claimant, and they agreed that the claimant would use his fishing boat, the M, to tow the F to the Port of Serifos for EUR 6,000.

The claimant demanded to be paid EUR 25,000 due to the absence of a salvage agreement. The Court of First Instance partially accepted his claim and awarded EUR 6,000.

Both parties appealed the decision.

Held: Both appeals are dismissed.

The Court of Appeal reviewed arts 1, 1.a, 2, 6, 7, 7.a, 7.b, 8, 12, 13, 13.1, 13.3, 14, 15.1, 17, 24, and 29 of the Salvage Convention 1989 and came to the following conclusions:

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 It repealed the Salvage Convention 1910, and the provisions of the CPML regulating the same issues, and replaced them with the Salvage Convention 1989.

Article 2 of the Convention provides that it governs judicial or administrative proceedings concerning matters covered by it, whenever such proceedings are initiated in a Member State; ie, it governs 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, ie, assistance provided in inland waters and by (or to) inland waterway vessels.

Under 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 is determined by the Court on the criteria set out in art 13.1, irrespective of the order in which they are listed. 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 must 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. Such 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 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 service paid to a ship, equipped with propulsion power, that transports 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.

The circumstances under which a contract of maritime salvage is concluded are often unusual, dangerous, and pressing. Therefore, specifically, the influence on the parties' will in these abnormal circumstances and any abuse of contractual freedom must be dealt with in the context of maritime law. The provisions of art 7 of the Convention have a public policy nature. Article 7.1 concerns the conclusion of the terms of the contract, which allows for its annulment or modification if it was concluded under the impermissible influence of the parties to the contract, even one of them, which may have existed, in the case, among others, of physical or psychological violence inflicted on a contracting party to obtain acceptance of the contract. As such, 'under the influence of danger', includes the danger required for the constitution of the concept of the maritime salvage and if the terms of the contract are 'onerous', ie they impose an unequal distribution of essential rights or obligations on the parties and jeopardise the purpose of the contract or, in other words, unduly disturb the balance of the contract. The decisive time at which the reasonableness of the term is tested is when the contract is drawn up. Article 7.2 concerns the contractual determination of remuneration, a term which may be annulled and amended in the event of a disparity between supply and counter-supply, if the remuneration agreed is too high or too low in relation to the services provided. The benchmark for assessing what is too high or too low is the remuneration that would have been awarded in the absence of an agreement to that effect.

The Court of First Instance rejected the claim for interest because the claimant did not allege that the defendant was using the boat for commercial purposes and therefore that the dispute was of a commercial nature, pursuant to art 111 of the Introductory Act to the Civil Code, in conjunction with art 24 of the Convention.

It was proven on the evidence that the defendant contacted the claimant, and the parties concluded an oral agreement that the claimant with his fishing boat would safely transport the defendant's boat to the port of Serifos, and would be paid EUR 6,000. It was also proved that the defendant's boat was in a real, even if not immediate, but probable danger, within the meaning of the provisions of the Salvage Convention 1989. It was unable to continue sailing, due to damage to its engines, which could not be repaired at sea, but also due to the fact that it remained adrift, at a considerable distance from land, during the night with strong winds in the area. That situation was not merely an unusual situation from which the vessel in question was unable to escape by its own means, but was actively capable of causing its loss or damage. The defendant, a conscientious, competent, and prudent operator of the boat, having consulted his engineer, assessed the totality of the circumstances and the threatened damage to his boat, and that the condition of his boat was so unsafe that, in his opinion, the intervention of a third party was necessary as a matter of fact, and for this reason he called the authorities for assistance.

Moreover, the aforementioned marine peril to the defendant's boat was not eliminated by the provision of assistance by the tanker D, since it was passing by and its assistance was therefore temporary. Thus, the danger to the defendant's boat was finally eliminated by its safe towage to the port of Serifos by the claimant's fishing boat. The assistance of the claimant's fishing vessel did not constitute a mere towage of the vessel, but maritime salvage, since the vessel was in danger, even if it was completed by towing the defendant's vessel to a safe harbour.

Taking into account: 1) the value of the rescued boat of EUR 120,000, which was not reduced after the incident; 2) the difficulty for the claimant's fishing vessel (not a salvage vessel) of approaching and boarding the defendant's adrift vessel; 3) the risk of liability carried by the claimant and his boat; 4) the timeliness of the services provided in difficult conditions; 5) the accomplishment of safe tethering to his boat and the towage of the F to a safe anchorage; 6) the time of six hours allocated by the claimant; 7) the fact that the mechanism for the anchor falling of the F was twisted at the time it was moored to the tanker D and not by the maritime salvage services provided by the claimant; 8) the risk-taking and zeal shown by the claimant; and 9) the fuel consumption costs incurred by the claimant, the fee agreed between the parties for the salvage services in the amount of EUR 6,000 is reasonable under the criteria set out in art 13.1 of the Convention. In any event, that fee was not disproportionately higher than the maritime salvage services actually provided by the claimant. In view of the circumstances and nature of the specific legal transaction, at the time it was drawn up, without taking into account the subjective circumstances or wishes of the parties, it is not considered to exceed the extent to which it is humanly natural and fair for the salvor to benefit from a contract of an economic nature, in particular a contract of maritime salvage, to the detriment of the other party.