Mate's Receipts and B/L Clausing: Clean vs Claused Bills of Lading

The mate's receipt is the first document evidencing that cargo has actually been taken on board. On completion of loading, the officer records the quantity received and the cargo's apparent condition, and the bill of lading is in most cases prepared on the basis of it.

Because the carrier is generally expected to deliver cargo in the apparent condition in which it was received, recording visible defects at loading is a natural form of protection for the ship.

Remarks depend on the cargo and normally concern its apparent condition. Typical examples encountered in the field include:

Under letters of credit, banks generally require a clean on board bill of lading, so a claused bill can delay or complicate payment to the seller. For the buyer, a clause signals that the cargo was already defective when shipped.

On the other hand, leaving a genuine defect off the bill exposes the carrier. Issuing a clean bill against a letter of indemnity is seen in the trade, but it is widely recognised that this can prejudice P&I cover, and such decisions should always be reviewed with the parties' own legal advisers.

Most disputes are about wording. A shipper may object to surface rust seen on a few units being described in a blanket clause covering the whole parcel, while the ship may maintain that the condition was widespread.

What settles the argument is a concrete record of which units were affected, to what extent and when. Observations logged by unit number or by hold and backed by dated photographs help define the scope of a clause in a reasonable way.

Quantity remarks are a separate battleground. For bulk cargo, the B/L figure is often based on shore scale or draft survey results; if the ship cannot verify it, the bill may carry weight-unknown wording. Recording any difference between ship and shore figures becomes important if a shortage is alleged at discharge.

Clausing risk cannot be removed entirely, but separating defective cargo before it reaches the ship and keeping orderly records reduces it considerably.

Steel products often wait in open storage, so some atmospheric surface rust is normal. Disputes usually turn on how that normal rust is distinguished from rust caused by wetting or affecting the product's usability, which is why clauses such as partly rusty, rust spots or wet before shipment are used with different meanings.

To indicate whether wetting is from fresh water or seawater, the silver nitrate test is widely used in the field as a preliminary check for chlorides on the surface. Observations of this kind made before loading help show the cargo's condition at shipment if wetting is disputed at discharge.

The surveyor does not write clauses or issue bills of lading; that authority lies with the carrier. The surveyor's role is to observe and record the apparent condition of the cargo independently and make those records available to the appointing party, giving everyone a factual reference when the scope of a clause is debated.

Karan Gözetim provides loading and discharge supervision from its base in Gemlik; the level of detail in cargo condition records is agreed at the quotation stage.