A Case Study on Final Voyage of the Time Charter

정기용선계약의 최종항해에 대한 사례연구

Every time charter must have a final terminal date, that is a date by which the charterer is contractually obliged to redeliver the vessel. Where the law implies a margin or tolerance beyond an expiry date stipulated in the charter party, the final terminal date comes at the end of such implied extension. When the parties have agreed in the charter party on the margin or tolerance to be allowed, the final terminal date comes at the end of such agreed period. But the nature of a time charter is that the charter is for a finite period of time and when the final terminal date arrives the charterer is contractually bound to redeliver the vessel to the owner References to delivery and redelivery are strictly inaccurate since the vessel never leaves the possession of the shipowner, but the expression are conventionally used to describe the time when the period of the charter begins and ends. The legitimacy or otherwise of what is to be regarded as a vessel's final voyage must be judged at the time when the charterers give an order for the vessel to carry out the voyage in question, and then by reference to what they order her to do. The purpose of this paper aims to analyse cases on the final voyage of time charter, and specially to explore implications of the final voyage in time charter through the Gregos case.