Home / For international owners / Claims
Wreck removal ordered years later: which policy answers?
Short answer
Authorities rarely move quickly on a sunken boat. The order to lift it can arrive years later, long after the policy has run out, and it still arrives addressed to the owner. Report the sinking when it happens, in writing.
Harbour authorities, navigation authorities and canal trusts do not usually act the moment a boat goes down. A hull on the bottom of a basin or at the edge of a fairway can lie there for years, and when the order finally comes the trigger is often something else entirely: dredging work, a rebuild of the pontoons, a new company taking over the marina, a survey of the channel. The bill goes to the owner of the wreck, and that is still the person on the register, long after everyone else has stopped thinking about it.
That leaves a question of timing almost nobody asks until it matters. The insured event was the sinking. The cost arises only with the order, which can be years later. If the policy ended in between, through a sale, a cancellation or a move to another insurer, it is far from obvious which contract is meant to answer. Of the wordings reviewed for this page, none deals with the case expressly. Clauses about run off liability, where they appear at all, tend to be about insurance tax and the location of the risk rather than about lifting a hull out of the mud.
Three habits make the difference. Report the sinking even when nobody is asking for anything yet, and ask for written confirmation that the report has been filed: a notified event from inside the policy period is a far better starting point than an order landing years later on a contract that has expired. Do not cancel or switch while a wreck of yours is still in the water. And do not count on giving the problem away: in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands alike, the duty to remove follows ownership, and abandoning a hull does not shake it off.
Worth remembering
Years
a wreck often lies before anyone acts
The policy
has usually ended long before that
The order follows the register entry, and it does not ask whether a contract is still running.
Questions
What owners ask us about this
Can I get rid of the wreck by abandoning ownership?
Usually not. The duty to remove attaches to the owner, and walking away from the hull does not pass it to the harbour or to the state. What the authority reads is the register entry.
What should I do on the day the boat goes down?
Report the event, even without being asked, and have the report confirmed in writing. That confirmation is the evidence that the insured event falls inside the policy period.
Can an order still arrive after the boat has been sold?
It can, and the first questions will be who owned the vessel when it sank and who owns it now. Keep the bill of sale, the deregistration and the written notification together in one file.
The wreck is in a river with no obvious authority. Does that help?
Only until someone becomes responsible for that stretch of water. A new berth operator or a dredging programme can produce an order many seasons after the event, and the paperwork from the time is what you will be looking for.
Related
Not sure whether you qualify?
Whether it is “Wreck removal ordered years later: which policy answers?” or another question: send us your residence and the flag your boat flies. You will get a straight answer in one email; including a no, if that is the answer.
Was this useful?
