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London and Overseas Freighters v Timber Shipping Co SA ‘The London Explorer’: HL 1972

References: [1971] 1 Lloyds Rep 523, [1972] AC 1
Coram: Lord Morris, Lord Reid
The London Explorer was under a charter where the hire was ‘to continue until the hour of the day of her redelivery’. The charterers redelivered the ship about 3 months late because, although she had set out on a legitimate last voyage, she had been delayed by strikes at her last two discharging ports.
Held: The owners recovered for the additional hire at the charterparty rate even though the market rate during the overrun period was less than the charterparty rate.
Lord Morris: ‘Even though the time set out in a charterparty is not made of the essence so that continued use of the vessel after the stated time will not at once have the result that such continued use will be in breach of contract, it will be necessary that redelivery should be within a reasonable time. It might well be . . that with a clause similar to clause 4 a charterer would be liable to pay hire at the contractual rate to the time of actual redelivery and in addition (if the current rate exceeded the contractual rate) to pay damages in respect of his failure to redeliver within a reasonable time’.
Lord Reid said: ‘There is a controversy as to whether one can ever look at deleted words in an agreement. If the words were first inserted by the draftsman of the agreement and then deleted before signature then I have no doubt that they must not be considered in construing the agreement. They are in the same position as any other preliminary suggestion put forward and rejected before the final agreement was made. But it appears to me that striking out words from a printed form is quite a different matter. The process of adapting a printed form to make it express the parties’ intentions requires two things to be done. Those parts which are not to be part of the agreement are struck out and words are inserted to complete the rest of the form so as to express the agreement. There is no inference that in striking out words the parties had second thoughts: the words struck out were never put there by the parties or any of them or by their draftsman.’
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