When the pressure is commercial and the decision is about safety, the rule is simple: the master decides, and the reasoning goes in the log. This chapter sets out where that authority comes from, its limits, and how to build a record that will stand up later.
Every company operating under the ISM Code has to write a sentence into its safety management system that most crew barely notice until the day it matters: the master has overriding authority and responsibility to take whatever decision is necessary for the safety of life, the ship, and the protection of the environment. That sentence is not a courtesy. It is a mandatory element of the SMS, and its absence is a finding in itself during an audit.
What it means in practice is narrower, and more useful, than "the master is always right." The authority is overriding only within its scope — safety and pollution prevention — and only when a decision is genuinely necessary. It does not make the master immune from the company's procedures in ordinary operation, and it does not license overruling technical or commercial instructions that have nothing to do with safety. What it does is remove, entirely, the company's ability to second-guess a safety decision after the fact by pointing to schedule, cost, or a standing instruction. Commercial pressure — a charterer's laycan, an owner's fuel budget, a port agent's turnaround target — carries no weight against it.
The master also has an explicit right to request the company's assistance, and the company is obliged by the same clause to provide it. The relationship runs both ways: authority to decide, and a standing call for support that the company cannot refuse to answer.
The company cannot delegate this authority because it never had it to give — Code and convention place it with the master directly, and the SMS simply records that fact.
SOLAS Chapter V places a duty on the master of any ship, of any flag, in a position to provide assistance on receiving information that persons are in distress at sea: proceed with all speed to their assistance, if possible informing them or the search and rescue service that the ship is doing so. The obligation is not conditional on convenience, and it is not a matter the charter party or the company can waive.
The escape from the duty is narrow and specifically worded: the master is released only if unable to assist, or if, in the special circumstances of the case, proceeding is considered unreasonable or unnecessary — for instance, another ship is already closer and has been tasked by the rescue coordination centre, or the ship's own condition makes the passage itself dangerous. Even then, the exercise of that judgement is not silent. The master who decides not to proceed, or to proceed at reduced speed, must record the reason in the official log at the time the decision is made. An undocumented decision not to assist looks, months later in an inquiry, exactly like a decision not to bother.
Once underway to assist, the master remains in charge of the ship's own safety throughout — proceeding to a distress does not mean closing to a point that endangers the rescuing vessel, and the rescue coordination centre's instructions are coordination, not command of the ship.
"Unable or unreasonable" is a high bar, and reaching it without writing down why is, for practical purposes, not reaching it at all.
A pilot brings local knowledge the master cannot be expected to have — the set of a current around a bend, the practical width of a channel, the timing of a swing bridge. None of that changes who commands the ship. The pilot advises; the master, or the officer of the watch under the master's authority, retains command and remains responsible for the safety of navigation throughout the pilotage, whether it is voluntary or compulsory under local port regulations.
Compulsory pilotage changes who must be engaged, not who is accountable. A port authority can require that a pilot be carried, and can penalise a ship for proceeding without one; it cannot transfer the master's responsibility for the ship's safety onto the pilot by doing so. If the pilot's recommendation would put the ship, the crew, another vessel, or the environment at risk — a course that closes a shoal too fast, a speed that leaves too little water under the keel, a berthing plan that ignores a forecast wind shift — the master is expected to query it, and to intervene if the answer does not resolve the concern.
This is where bridge resource management and the legal position meet: querying a pilot is not insubordination, and staying silent because "the pilot has the con" is not a defence if something goes wrong. A master who never challenges a pilot has, in effect, delegated a duty that cannot be delegated.
Ask the standard question — what is your intention, and what is the reason for it? — and keep asking until the answer is safe, however routine the pilot considers the manoeuvre.
A voyage charter or bill of lading will typically promise a direct or customary route, and departing from it without justification is a breach with real financial consequences for the owner. Carriage law has long recognised, however, that a deviation made to save life at sea sits outside that promise — it is an excepted deviation, not a breach, under the Hague-Visby Rules. Deviation to save property, or to avoid a genuinely dangerous situation on the master's own judgement of the ship's safety, sits on firmer ground than a deviation made purely to save time or fuel, or to chase a better market.
The distinction the master has to hold onto under pressure is between a safety decision and a commercial one dressed up as a safety decision. Pressing on into forecast conditions the ship or crew are not fit for, or cutting a passage plan's margin to make a laycan, is not protected by calling it operational judgement — it is exactly the kind of decision the ISM Code's overriding-authority clause exists to insulate against pressure. A charterer's request to "make every effort," an agent's message about a tight berth window, or an owner's silence when asked for guidance changes none of the analysis. The master decides on safety grounds, tells the company promptly what was decided and why, and lets the commercial consequences follow from an honestly made and logged decision rather than from a decision made to please whoever was applying the pressure.
If a decision would look different with the charterer's email deleted, it was not really a safety decision.
Almost every legal or contractual dispute that reaches a master's ship starts from the same question: what does the log say happened, and when was it written? A contemporaneous entry — made at or close to the time of the event, unaltered afterward — carries weight that a reconstruction written up days later, however accurate, does not. The habit worth building is to write the decision and its reason down before the pressure to reconsider it has had time to work.
A note of protest serves a narrower, specific purpose: it is a formal statement, typically sworn before a notary or consular officer, recording that the ship encountered conditions — heavy weather, an obstruction, a delay not of the ship's making — that may have caused loss or damage to cargo or the ship, without yet knowing whether they did. It is entered at the first opportunity after arrival, generally before cargo operations begin, and it is a shield rather than a remedy: it does not itself recover anything, but it preserves the ship's position and puts the other side on notice, so silence cannot later be read as an admission that nothing untoward occurred.
Leaving it until after discharge, or until a claim actually arrives, undermines the entire purpose — the protest exists precisely to be on record before events move on and memories, cargo condition, and evidence do too.
Log it when it happens; protest it before the cargo comes out. Both are about timing, not content.
When an incident is serious enough to draw a flag State, port State, or classification investigation, the master's position shifts from commanding the response to accounting for it — and the two roles pull in different directions if they are not kept separate in the master's own mind. During the incident, the priority is the ship, the crew, and stopping the situation getting worse. Once it is under control, the priority becomes preserving evidence: securing the log, VDR data, and any relevant records before routine overwriting or reuse erases them, and noting who was where and when while memories are fresh.
In interview or in a written statement to investigators, the master's job is to give facts and observations — what was seen, what was ordered, what time it happened — not conclusions about fault, cause, or blame. Investigators, insurers and courts draw those conclusions from the facts; a master who volunteers an opinion on who was at fault has usually gone beyond what they can actually know at the time, and may have to retract it later. Company guidance, and usually a P&I correspondent or lawyer engaged early, exists precisely to keep a statement to what the master actually witnessed.
Escalating early — to the company, the designated person ashore, the flag administration, class, and the P&I club, roughly in that order as the situation demands — is never held against a master. Discovering afterward that help was available and was not asked for, is.
State what you saw and did; leave the finding of fault to the process built to make it.
Two scenario-judgement walkthroughs: whether and how fast to divert to a distress call under commercial pressure not to, and whether to override a pilot's speed recommendation when the numbers do not support it.
Your container ship is on passage at a steady 18 knots when the bridge receives a MAYDAY relay from the MRCC: a fishing vessel 36 nautical miles away, on a bearing that requires an alteration of course, is taking on water. No other vessel has yet reported in the area. The charter party's voyage instructions state that the master must not deviate from the direct route without the owners' prior consent, and the charterer's agent has separately asked, by email an hour earlier, for the ship to hold its ETA. What do you do, and how quickly can you be there?
Ship's speed on passage = 18 knots Distance to the reported distress position = 36 nautical miles Charter party requires owners' consent before any deviation No other vessel yet confirmed as responding
What do you do, and how quickly can you be there?
Identify the duty.
A MAYDAY relay received from the MRCC, with no other vessel yet tasked, engages the master's obligation under SOLAS V/33 to proceed with all speed to the assistance of persons in distress, informing the rescue service that the ship is doing so.
Work out how long that assistance will take to arrive at full sea speed.
Since that is a fact the master will need immediately — for the MRCC, for the log, and for the company.
Test the charter party objection.
A deviation made to save life at sea has long been treated as an excepted deviation under carriage law — it is not a breach of the contract of carriage, and it does not require the owners' or charterers' prior consent. The master's duty under SOLAS and the company's own ISM overriding-authority clause both sit above a voyage instruction on this point.
Decide what to log, and when.
The alteration of course, the time the MAYDAY relay was received, the position and distance given, and the ETA at the distress position are entered in the log at the time the decision is made — not reconstructed afterward once the outcome is known.
AnswerAlter course for the distress position immediately at full sea speed (ETA in 2.0 hours), log the MAYDAY relay and the reason for the deviation at the time, and notify owners and the charterer of the deviation and its cause without waiting for their consent — remaining on task until released by the MRCC or satisfied assistance is no longer needed.
The trap: waiting for the owners' or charterers' consent before altering course — the duty to assist does not require permission, and any delay in responding must itself be justified and logged.
Your bulk carrier, drawing a static draught of 12.00 m, is inbound under compulsory pilotage to a river berth. The charter party sets a tidal window for arrival, and the charterer's agent has asked the master by email to "make every effort" not to miss it. At the critical shoal section of the approach, the chart shows a depth of 12.60 m, and the tide tables give a height of tide of +0.60 m at the planned time of transit. The pilot recommends holding 12 knots through the section to keep to the window; at that speed the ship's squat is estimated at 0.55 m. Company policy sets the minimum underkeel clearance at 10% of static draught. What do you do?
Static draught = 12.00 m Charted depth at the critical section = 12.60 m Height of tide at planned transit time = +0.60 m Squat at pilot's proposed 12 knots = 0.55 m Company minimum UKC policy = 10% of static draught Charterer has requested no loss of time to the tidal window
What do you do?
Establish the depth of water actually available at the critical section at the planned time of transit.
Work out the underkeel clearance that the pilot's proposed speed would actually leave, once squat is taken into account.
Compare that against the company's own minimum and quantify the shortfall.
Apply the command principle.
Compulsory pilotage does not transfer responsibility for the ship's safety to the pilot, and the pilot's local knowledge does not extend to the company's own UKC policy or to the master's overriding authority on a safety matter. The charterer's schedule pressure has no bearing on the calculation and carries no weight against it.
AnswerQuery the pilot's recommendation, direct a reduction in speed (or, if that alone cannot restore clearance, hold back for the next suitable window) to bring the net UKC back above the 1.20 m minimum, and log the shortfall, the pilot's original recommendation, and the reason for departing from it and from the charterer's request.
The trap: treating the pilot's recommendation as authoritative because pilotage is compulsory — compulsory pilotage changes who must be carried, not who is accountable for the ship's safety.
ISM Code para 5Master's overriding authority and responsibility; must be stated in the SMSSOLAS V/33Obligation to proceed with all speed to assist persons in distressSOLAS V/34Safe navigation; master's authority to depart from an instruction that endangers the shipHague-Visby Rules Art IV r.4Deviation to save life at sea is an excepted deviationNote of protestSworn before a notary/consul, at the first opportunity, to preserve evidencePilotageAdvisory only; compulsory pilotage does not transfer responsibility for safetyDeviationJustified for safety or life; deviation for purely commercial reasons is a breachLog bookContemporaneous, unaltered, timed and signed; the primary evidence in any inquiryEscalation chainCompany → DPA → flag State → classification society → P&I club, raised earlyMaster's statementFacts and observations, not conclusions on fault or liability