GARD GUIDANCE ON BILLS OF LADING

An excellent and very useful guidance prepared and officially released by GARD professionals with the purpose to serve as a handy and practical reference tool to be used to assist the Master of the ship in avoiding various problems and pitfalls. It is also hoped that the other readers, i.e. not necessarily ship Masters, will find the publication useful.

The book has been written using a very simple language and clear terminology to make it reader-friendly even for the people who are not native speakers of English language. The present guidance is intended to explain what exactly a bill of lading can and what this document is used for, the Master's obligation in connection with the bills of lading, and also various consequences of things done wrong, what should be done or considered before signing such document or authorizing someone else to sign, how exactly delivery against BOL shall be made and how to deal with the problems that may possibly arise.

The theoretical part of the book is supplemented with the examples for better understanding. The authors have tried to make the structure of the publication as logical and practical, as possible. The guidance provided to the readers of the booklet is mainly based on English law; however, in the cases where other laws apply, different guidance might be applicable.