The plaintiff was employed as a deck officer on the tanker Halcyon Skies. His employment contract provided that the plaintiff would be a member of a pension fund, his employer would pay the employer's contribution in respect of him into the fund, and with his authority deduct employee's contributions from his pay and pay them into the fund.

While the plaintiff was still serving on the tanker, a petition was presented for the winding up of the plaintiff's employer and a provisional liquidator was appointed. Subsequently, following an action by one of the mortgagees, the tanker was sold, and the proceeds of sale were paid into Court.

The amount of the employer's contributions that the employer should have paid into the fund in respect of the plaintiff's employment was GBP 97.46. The amount of the employee's contributions that the employer had properly deducted from the plaintiff's pay was GBP 52.97. Neither of these two sums was paid into the fund by the employer. The plaintiff brought an action against the proceeds of sale in order to recover these amounts. The plaintiff contended, among other things, that he had a maritime lien for the claim, so was entitled to priority over competing claims.

The employer, the first defendant, initially disputed the plaintiff's case regarding both sums. At the hearing, however, its case regarding the employee’s contributions was conceded. The mortgagee, who had a competing claim on the proceeds of sale, was joined as the second defendant to the action.

Held: The plaintiff is entitled to judgment for the employee's and the employer's contributions, and a declaration that he had a maritime lien in respect of both sums.

The concession with regard to the employee's contributions was rightly made. The plaintiff had a good claim in debt. He had under his employment contract given the employer authority to deduct such contributions from his pay and pay them into the fund. The employer had acted on the first part of that authority but not on the second. In these circumstances, the plaintiff was entitled to revoke the second part of that authority, namely for payment of the sums deducted to the fund, and to require the employer to pay such sums to him instead. He did this by issuing his writ in the present action. There can be no doubt that the sums concerned, having been deducted from the plaintiff’s pay in the first place, were part of his wages for the purpose of s 1(1)(o) of the Administration of Justice Act 1956 (UK) (the Act).

When the admiralty jurisdiction over claims for wages was redefined by Parliament in 1956, the requirement that wages should have been earned on board ship was removed. This was in accordance with the description of the corresponding maritime claim in art 1.1.m of the Arrest Convention 1952, which refers simply to claims arising out of 'wages of Masters, Officers, or crew'.

Since 1950, several cases have been decided that bear on the scope of admiralty claims for wages. Cases between 1951 and 1968 decided that where a seafarer is employed by a shipowner on board a ship, employer's as well as employee's contributions payable to pension or other similar funds were, if unpaid, recoverable by the employee as wages. They were clearly favourable to the plaintiff's claim in this case.

The failure of the employer to pay the employer's contribution was a breach of contract for which the plaintiff was entitled to recover damages at law. It followed that his cause of action in respect of such contributions was in damages and not in debt. The plaintiff was entitled to be put back in a position where he had a legal entitlement to the benefits concerned, and the way in which that could most readily be done was by awarding him money so that he could pay into the fund himself the contributions which the employer should have paid in respect of him.

The nature of contributions to a pension fund justified the view that the employer's and employee's contributions to such a fund could properly be regarded as part of an employee's total wages in the broad sense of that word. Whether the plaintiff's claim was in debt or in damages made no difference because the admiralty jurisdiction in wages had long extended to claims founded in damages as well as debt. Therefore, the plaintiff's claim relating to the employer's contributions was a claim for wages within the meaning of s 1(1)(o) of the Act.

The contract under which the plaintiff was employed was a special contract rather than an ordinary mariner's contract. Section 1(1)(o) of the Act extended the maritime lien which had been recognised as existing in respect of wages claims arising out of ordinary mariners' contracts to wages claims arising out of special contracts. So far as a seafarer's rights and remedies in admiralty are concerned, the old distinction between a special contract and an ordinary mariner's contract was no longer significant.