## Facts

- A shipowner and a time charterer executed a time charter in New York for the British steamship *Claveresk* for about five years from delivery, at £1,320 per month, with specified trading limits.
- The charter contained a “mutual exceptions” clause excusing performance for, among other events, “restraint of princes, rulers, and people” and “errors of navigation,” and included other standard charter provisions.
- The vessel entered charter service in April 1913 and was used largely in the charterer’s commercial trade between Cuba and the United States.
- In January 1917, during World War I and with over a year left on the charter, the British Admiralty (through an official transport office) notified the owner that the vessel was required for government service after completing discharge in the West Indies, indicating a formal requisition would follow.
- The owner responded with the vessel’s position and expected availability and instructed the master to place the vessel under Admiralty agents’ orders.
- In early February 1917, while the vessel was in Cuba, it was withdrawn from the charterer’s service and placed into British government service pursuant to the requisition.
- The charterer sued the owner in admiralty for breach and repudiation of the time charter based on the vessel’s withdrawal before the charter term ended.

## Issues

1. Whether the owner’s compliance with a wartime British Admiralty requisition, resulting in withdrawal of the vessel from charter service, constituted a breach or repudiation of the time charter.
2. Whether the charter’s “restraint of princes, rulers, and people” exception excused the owner from continued performance and barred the charterer’s claim for damages.

## Decision

- The court affirmed dismissal of the charterer’s libel.
- The Admiralty requisition was treated as an exercise of sovereign power that the owner was bound to obey, not a voluntary commercial choice to end the charter.
- The requisition constituted a “restraint of princes, rulers, and people” within the charter’s mutual exceptions clause.
- Because the governmental restraint was an excepted peril, the owner’s nonperformance was excused and the charterer could not recover damages for the loss of the vessel’s service.

## Legal Principles

- A lawful sovereign requisition of a vessel for government service is a “restraint of princes, rulers, and people” within standard maritime exceptions language.
- Where a time charter mutually excepts governmental restraints, the owner is not liable for damages when such a restraint makes continued charter performance unavailable or unlawful.
- Communications by an owner to implement compliance with a governmental requisition (e.g., reporting position and availability, directing the master to take orders) do not, without more, convert compelled compliance into a voluntary repudiation of the charter.

## Conclusion

The court held that the owner’s withdrawal of the vessel from charter service due to a wartime Admiralty requisition fell within the charter’s “restraint of princes” exception, excusing performance and defeating the charterer’s breach claim.


Earn Line S.S. Co. v. Sutherland S.S. Co., 264 F. 276 (2d Cir. 1920)