Dali's owner declares 'general average' in Key Bridge disaster. What does that mean?

“A lot of it is going to rest upon what actually caused the vessel to lose power,” Brock said. “That’s going to be the determinative factor.”

It’s still being ascertained what, exactly, prompted the 248-million pound ship to lose power and then smash into a support pier, folding the bridge upon itself and into the river below. The National Transportation Safety Board is focusing on the ship’s electronic system as it analyzes what went wrong and Monday the FBI raided the ship as part of an investigation.

“If the cargo interests can demonstrate that the ship was not seaworthy, then they have a defense against paying any contributions to general average,” Spencer said.

The collapse, which made international headlines, could be the costliest maritime loss ever and litigation both pointing fingers and defending against financial responsibility has begun already. Dali’s Singapore-based owner and manager, Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, respectively, have asked a federal judge to absolve them of liability in the incident and Baltimore City recently hired attorneys to pursue legal action against those two entities as well as Maersk, a Danish company that was chartering the ship.

Maritime disasters often create an elaborate web. In this case, a Singapore-flagged vessel built by a South Korean shipbuilder and staffed with an Indian crew, carrying cargo for both a Danish and a Swiss company, crashed into a bridge in American waters that connected Baltimore City to the rest of Maryland and the mid-Atlantic.

That Swiss organization, Mediterranean Shipping Co., shared in a news release a letter that the ship’s owner sent to Maersk. In it, a Grace Ocean executive wrote that “in the course of laden voyage, the vessel contacted Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, USA. As a result of this, ship and cargo were in a position of peril and required salvage services to free the vessel from the collapsed bridge and bring her to a place of common safety.”

“As a consequence of the above,” the letter continued, “shipowners hereby declare General Average.”

In such cases, a general average adjuster is selected by the ship’s owner to determine how much each cargo owner would be responsible for paying. Grace Ocean appointed London-based Richards Hogg Lindley, which also was the adjuster for the Ever Given when it ran aground in the Suez Canal in 2021 and the Ever Forward, which got stuck in the Chesapeake Bay for over a month in 2022.

Many cargo owners likely have insurance, which would underwrite that cost, but those that don’t will have to put up a deposit to retrieve their cargo. On a typical container ship, Spencer said, as much as one-third of the cargo might be uninsured.

In the meantime, authorities will continue the cumbersome process of slowly removing steel and containers from the Dali, whose bow is stuck in the river bottom, in an effort to refloat it. Of the more than 4,000 containers on the ship, 40 had been removed as of Tuesday with plans to remove at least 100 more.