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CHARTERING
Parties involved
Owner – Charterer
The parties which are involved in a contract of affreightment, are: the Owner, i.e. the person who lets the ship and receives the freight and the Charterer, i.e. the person who hires the ship and must pay the freight.
In principle, the Owner is the person to whom the ship belongs (see also Persons and Businesses Related to Shipping). It is however not necessary that the Owner is the actual Owner of the ship. An individual may hire himself a ship to sublet it further to someone else. In that case, this individual is called Disponent Owner (see also the paragraph dealing with the Disponent Owner). This is very current in bareboat or demise chartering and in time chartering.
Under the voyage charter one frequently refers to the Disponent Owner with the term Operator. Under the time charter one calls the Time Charterer who sublets the vessel to a third person, Chartered Owner or Time Chartered Owner.
Summarized
- If the Owner is the actual Owner of the ship then he is simply called Owner.
- If the Owner is not the actual Owner of the ship then he is called Disponent Owner or Operator, Chartered Owner, or Time Chartered Owner.
- If the commercial exploitation of the ship is left to a company or society then one calls that company or society, Managing Owner or Operator. In that case the term Operator is also used.
(See also the paragraphs Owner, Disponent Owner and the Owner.)
In the three cases: the Owner, the Disponent Owner and the Managing Owner (and therefore also the operator) are, as far as the interpretation of the contract of affreightment is concerned, are all three considered as the Owner.
The Charterer is in principle the Owner of goods but he can just as well be importer, exporter, freight forwarder, …. .
