On a dark night, 21 May 1999, the big bulk carrier Panamax Star was sailing down the Amazon River near Itacoatiara. Ahead lay Auk, a ship that had been anchored for two days where a river pilot said it was safe. Panamax Star’s master saw Auk across the river and chose a risky maneuver to pass her. The current pushed Panamax Star onto Auk’s anchor cable, drawing the two ships together, and Auk’s bow hit Panamax Star’s starboard side near hold no. 5. No one tells this like a fairy tale: one vessel was moving, one was anchored, and contact happened.
After the crash, Brazilian authorities investigated. The port captaincy inquiry and Navy prosecutor proceedings ended with small fines: the Panamax Star’s master was fined, the Auk pilot’s conviction was overturned on appeal. While that was happening, the English Admiralty claim began. The cargo interests of Panamax Star issued a claim in May 2000, served it in May 2001, and then both sides agreed to put the normal court timetable on hold for a while. That “while” stretched. By 2005 they swapped formal collision statements, talked settlement from time to time, and then let the court process lie quiet for years. In simple words: the case slept.
What did the sides say? The claimants said Auk’s anchorage was unsafe and that Auk yawed a lot, making passing hard. The defendants said Panamax Star was going about 7 knots under pilotage, should have known Auk was there, and was 100% to blame. Money-wise, the cargo interests put their loss around USD 4.7 million; Auk’s owners counterclaimed roughly USD 32,000. Offers came and went (including Part 36 offers), but nothing closed the gap.
Time kept passing. From 2006 to 2013 there were long stretches with no real court steps. Pilots from both ships died years before any trial could be held, and memories faded. Yes, there were short, early witness statements, but they were brief and not fully consistent. In a case like this—how fast, what heading, how much yaw, how deep the water, how much chain—live oral evidence matters. If you wait too long, cross-examination turns into guesswork and expert “reconstructions” built on shaky facts. That is not justice; that is a history project.
So in March 2013 the claimants finally asked the court to list a case management conference (a CMC). In May 2013 the defendants asked the court to strike out the claim for want of prosecution and abuse of process. Mr Justice Hamblen looked at the whole timeline. Under the Civil Procedure Rules, parties must help the court deal with cases quickly. In collision actions, once the last collision statement is filed, the claimant should move to fix a CMC; here, that should have happened in mid-2005. It did not, and nothing meaningful happened for about seven years. The judge called that “extraordinary” delay, placed primary responsibility on the claimant, and found the breach egregious.
Could the case be saved by lesser penalties—like tight timetables or costs orders? The judge weighed that but said no. The delay had caused serious prejudice: the key issues turned on human memory (especially the two masters), the pilots were gone, and fifteen-plus years after the event a fair trial was no longer possible. Even if a trial could limp forward, it would be unfair and largely a reconstruction, not a proper testing of real-time perceptions. The justice of the case required a clean end.
Here is the natural end of the story: on 18 December 2013, the Admiralty Court struck out both the claim and the counterclaim. Why both? Because the same crippling delay infected the entire action. The court held that the claimant’s duty to press for a CMC had been ignored for years; the overall culpable delay was about seven years; the defendants had suffered serious prejudice; and, given the passage of time and the importance of oral evidence, a fair and proper trial could not be had. Having considered alternatives and found none adequate, the judge ordered that the proceedings stop there. That was the detailed final result, and it closed the book on Panamax Star v Auk in the Admiralty Court.
