Seatrade Maritime: General Average declared on ONE Henry Hudson

Ocean Network Express (ONE) has declared General Average on the container ship that caught fire in the Port of Los Angeles on 21 November.

In a circular to customers ONE said it had declared General Average on the ONE Henry Hudson. General Average is controversial with shippers as it requires them to share a portion of the cost of losses caused in a casualty and they have to pay a security deposit before cargo offloaded from the damaged vessel is released.

ONE has appointed Richard Hogg Lindlay as Average Adjusters for the process and the sole authorised party for collection of security and documentation.

The ONE Henry Hudson has returned to berth in the Yusen Terminal in the Port of LA on Wednesday evening to start the process of dewatering the vessel of wastewater from firefighting and offloading its cargo.

ONE Henry Hudson had arrived in the Port of LA on 19 November having crossed the Transpacific with its previous ports of call Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kobe in Japan according to GPS tracking data from Pole Star Global.

The fire onboard the ONE Henry Hudson started on Friday evening and a firefighting operation initially involved nearly 200 personnel. The vessel was towed to an anchorage outside the port’s breakwater early on Saturday morning as firefighting continued.

No-one was reported to have been injured in the incident which is the latest in a series of serious fires onboard container ships, which can take weeks if not months to fully extinguish.

The cause of the incident is under joint investigation by the US Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board.