Kedge Maritime

Ships do not wait for Monday

Maritime and admiralty attorneys on the Cape Town Foreshore. Ship arrests, cargo claims and casualty response in all eight South African commercial ports — answered by a partner, not a switchboard, at any hour.

Reach the duty partner

1996

Thirty years of South African admiralty practice, run from one office and never merged into anything larger.

214 vessels

Arrested, or released against security, in South African waters since the firm opened its doors.

8 ports

Saldanha, Cape Town, Mossel Bay, Gqeberha, Ngqura, East London, Durban, Richards Bay — with a correspondent in each.

24 hours

One number, ringing a partner's own phone. Groundings and sailings do not keep office hours and neither do we.

Admiralty work, and nothing else

Kedge is six attorneys and two candidate attorneys on the eighth floor of a building in Riebeek Street, four hundred metres from the Duncan Dock gate. We do admiralty and shipping work. We do not do anything else. Elana Bezuidenhout and Sipho Mthembu opened the practice in 1996, both out of the shipping departments of much larger firms and both tired of ship arrests being squeezed in between commercial property files. Everyone here has been aboard a working vessel, has sat in a P&I correspondent's office at two in the morning, and has argued an application in rem in the Cape Town admiralty court. We act for owners, charterers, cargo interests, underwriters and P&I clubs — and, more often than people expect, for crews who have not been paid in four months.

If it happens tonight

  1. Phone the number at the foot of this page before you phone anyone else. The vessel's name, the port, and one sentence about what has happened is all we need to start.
  2. Do not sign anything a salvor, an agent or a terminal puts in front of you until we have read it. A signature given at 03h00 has decided more of these matters than any argument we have ever made in court.
  3. Preserve the bridge and engine logs, the ECDIS record and the VDR before anything else is touched. The VDR overwrites itself in twelve hours and nobody has ever got that recording back.
  4. We will have an attorney at the port gate before it opens and, where the claim needs it, security in place or an arrest issued before the vessel can sail. That is the whole reason the line is answered at night.

Costs, and how we bill

What does it cost to arrest a ship?

Our fee for an urgent application in rem is R48 000 excluding VAT, whatever hour it is brought. The sheriff's deputy, the ship's watchman and the port's own charges are separate and are passed on at cost — budget roughly R25 000 to R60 000 a week for as long as the vessel is under arrest, depending on the port and the size of the ship.

Will I have to put up counter-security?

Not usually, and that is one of the reasons claims are brought in South Africa rather than elsewhere. The court can order counter-security under section 5(3) of the Admiralty Jurisdiction Regulation Act and does so more often than it used to, so we cost that possibility into the written opinion before you commit to anything.

Can you really act at three in the morning?

Yes, and we have. A partner and a candidate attorney are on call every night of the year, papers can be issued out of hours by the registrar, and we keep a standing arrangement with the sheriff's office in every port on the list below. The slowest part of a night arrest is almost never us.

Do you work on contingency?

For crew wage claims, yes — we never ask a seafarer for money up front. For commercial disputes, no. We bill hourly against a written estimate per phase, and we will tell you plainly when a claim is not worth what it will cost to run it.

We had a bulker arrested in Richards Bay on the Friday of a long weekend, with a charterer in Geneva who had gone quiet on us. Elana had the papers in front of the registrar before four and a partner standing on the quay by seven the next morning. The vessel sailed on the Tuesday with our security in hand. I have never once had that from a big firm.
Riaan de Kock, operations manager, Ndlovu Bulk Carriers, Durban

Where we act

Eight commercial ports, and a correspondent standing in each one. The number is the same wherever the vessel happens to be lying.

Cape Town

Duncan Dock and the Ben Schoeman container terminal, four hundred metres from this office. Arrests issued the same day, seven days a week.

Saldanha Bay

Iron ore and crude, and the deepest water on the coast. Ninety minutes up the West Coast — we drive rather than wait for a flight.

Mossel Bay

Offshore supply and the anchorage traffic. A correspondent in George covers the after-hours attendance and we follow in the morning.

Gqeberha

The old Port Elizabeth harbour — fruit, manganese and most of the small-craft and fishing work in the Eastern Cape.

Ngqura

Deepwater transhipment at Coega. Container claims here run bigger and settle slower than anywhere else on the coast.

East London

The only river port in the country, and the vehicle terminal. Tidal windows make the timing on an arrest unforgiving.

Durban

The busiest port in sub-Saharan Africa and where most of our cargo work begins. Two of our attorneys sit there a week in every month.

Richards Bay

Coal, aluminium and woodchip. Long weekends are when things go wrong here, which is precisely why the duty line exists.

Reach the duty partner

The number below rings a partner's own phone, every hour of every day: 021 419 8802. If it can wait until morning, this form is the better route.