It is claimed that maritime law develops and progresses through maritime disasters which force the international legislator to enact new laws or to amend existing rules to plug loopholes or cure deficiencies in the existing legal regimes.2 The drama of the RMS Titanic was the stimulus for the first SOLAS Convention.3 The Torrey Canyon oil spill affecting the shores of south-western England caused the coming into being of the 1969 Civil Liability Convention, followed by the Fund Convention of 1971; and the capsizing of the Herald of Free Enterprise off Zeebrugge in 1987 was responsible, along with a number of other catastrophes, for the introduction of the ISM Code in 1993.4 However, it is not only simple maritime disasters that result in new rules; court decisions which upset the shipping community can also do so. A case in point is the House of Lords’ decision in The Tojo Maru,5 which initiated the review of the 1957 Brussels Limitation Convention and its replacement by the 1976 London Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims. A similar example is the same House of Lords’ determination in The Nagasaki Spirit,6 which led to the introduction of the SCOPIC rules.7