Vol. 35 No. 1 (2021): Australian and New Zealand Maritime Law Journal
Articles

Foreign State Immunity and Marine Wrecks

Published 2021-11-28

Abstract

The very recent decision of the English Admiralty Court in Argentum Exploration Ltd v The Silver; The SS Tilawa has shone light on an important issue in maritime law: the rights of salvors who retrieve cargo from sunken foreign state-owned ships.  Specifically, can a foreign state defendant resist a claim for a salvage reward on the basis that it is entitled to foreign state immunity? 

This article aims first to provide a conceptual framework for immunity questions that arise in wreck salvage cases and secondly, an assessment of whether the existing law adequately balances the interest of salvors in obtaining compensation for their efforts with that of foreign state ship and cargo owners in protecting their sovereignty.  For the purposes of this article the term ‘salvage’ is used in the narrow sense of ‘recovery of a wreck for commercial (or profit) reasons’[2] by a private entity rather than measures taken by a coastal state for motives of historical or archaeological conservation.