When a seafarer dies on board, the family is usually offered the compensation fixed in the contract. Often that is the end of the conversation. But if the death was caused by negligence, by a crew member, by the master, or by a failure in the company’s own procedures, the contract amount may not be the limit of what the family can recover.

This article explains how negligence is proved from the ship’s own records, and how a family can claim damages beyond the contract. The criminal side, including reporting the death to the police under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, is covered in our article Seafarer death or injury on board: who is liable? The two routes can run side by side.

Contract compensation is a floor, not a ceiling

The compensation in the employment agreement or collective agreement is payable whether or not anyone was at fault. That is its value. It does not need a court case.

The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (MLC) makes clear that this payment does not take away the family’s other remedies. Under Regulation 4.2 and Standard A4.2.1, the contractual payment is made without prejudice to other legal rights. The shipowner may set off what it has paid against any damages later awarded for the same incident, but the family is not limited to the contract amount.

So the real question is this. Was the death caused by negligence? If so, a claim for full damages may be worth far more than the fixed sum, especially where the seafarer was young and supported a family.

What negligence looks like at sea

Most deaths on board are not freak accidents. They follow a pattern that every master has seen. Some common examples:

Entry into an enclosed space without testing the atmosphere, without a permit, or without a rescue team standing by.
Work at height or over the side without a harness, or in weather that made the job unsafe.
Machinery worked on without being isolated and locked out.
Mooring operations with worn lines, poor communication or crew standing in the snap-back zone.
A crew so small, or so tired, that safe procedures could not be followed.
Repeated warnings, near misses or defects reported to the office and never acted on.

The first four are usually failures on board. The last two point to the company ashore. That difference matters, because a failure in the company’s system is harder to blame on one crew member who may himself have died.

The company’s duties under the ISM Code

Every ship covered by the International Safety Management (ISM) Code must be run under a safety management system. The ISM Code is made mandatory by SOLAS. It places duties on the company, not only on the crew. Among them:

The company must have written procedures for key shipboard operations, including those that put the crew at risk.
It must make sure the ship is properly manned with qualified and fit seafarers.
It must appoint a designated person ashore with direct access to the highest level of management, to monitor safety.
Accidents, hazardous occurrences and non-conformities must be reported, investigated and corrected.
Equipment must be maintained, and defects acted on.
The master must have overriding authority to make decisions for safety, and the company must support him in using it.

Where the company wrote a procedure and then failed to resource it, ignored reports, or pressed the ship to keep a schedule at the cost of safety, the negligence lies with the company, not just with the people on deck.

Proving it: the ship’s own records

The best evidence of negligence is usually on board, in documents the company is required to keep. The family, or its lawyer, should ask for these early and in writing:

The risk assessment and permit to work for the job being done when the death occurred, including any enclosed space entry permit and the gas readings.
The relevant procedure from the safety management system manual, to compare what should have happened with what did.
Records of hours of rest. Under the MLC, a seafarer must have at least ten hours of rest in any 24 hours and 77 hours in any seven days, and records must be kept. Fatigue is a common hidden cause.
Drill records and training records for the crew involved.
Maintenance and defect records for the equipment involved.
Near-miss and non-conformity reports from earlier months, which may show the danger was known.
Log books, the master’s report and the company’s own investigation report.
Voyage data recorder (VDR) data, where the ship carries one. VDR data is overwritten after a period, so it must be preserved quickly.
Photographs, CCTV and messages between the ship and the office.

Send a written preservation request to the shipowner, the manager and the manning agency at once, asking that all these records be kept. Records that go missing after such a request can count against the company later.

Negligence in a civil claim is not the same as in a criminal case

Families are sometimes told there is no case because no one has been prosecuted. That is wrong. In Jacob Mathew v. State of Punjab, (2005) 6 SCC 1, the Supreme Court explained that criminal liability needs a high degree of negligence, while ordinary negligence is enough for a civil claim for damages. A death that does not lead to a conviction may still found a strong civil claim.

The civil claim for damages

In India, the Fatal Accidents Act, 1855 allows a claim for damages where a death is caused by a wrongful act, neglect or default. The claim is brought for the benefit of the spouse, parents and children of the person who died. Damages look at what the family has actually lost, chiefly the support the seafarer would have given over his working life.

The claim is usually made against the shipowner and the employer, who are answerable for the negligence of the master and crew in the course of their work, and for the failures of their own systems.

Time limits are short. A claim of this kind must be filed within the period fixed by the Limitation Act, 1963, which runs from the date of death. Do not let months pass while waiting for the company’s investigation.

Where can the family sue a foreign shipowner?

This is often the hardest part. The owner may be a single-ship company registered abroad. There are still routes:

Arrest of the ship in India. A claim for loss of life in connection with the operation of a ship is a maritime claim under the Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) Act, 2017. If the ship calls at an Indian port, it can be arrested until security is given. See our article Ship arrest in India.
A suit in an Indian court where part of the cause of action arose in India, for example where the seafarer was recruited and signed his contract here through an Indian agency.
The P&I club. In practice the shipowner’s liability insurer is the party that pays a negligence claim, and it will usually engage once a serious claim is made.

Contracts sometimes contain clauses choosing a foreign court or arbitration. Whether such a clause binds the family’s claim for damages depends on its wording and on the claim. A lawyer should look at it before anything is filed.

What the family should do

Accept the contractual compensation, but sign only a plain receipt for it. Do not sign a release that gives up all other claims. Our guide When a seafarer dies at sea: how the family claims compensation explains this step by step.
Send a preservation request for the ship’s records at once.
Write down what crew members, friends on board and the company said, with dates.
Collect proof of the seafarer’s earnings and of the family’s dependence on him.
Take legal advice on negligence before the limitation period runs.

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When negligence kills a seafarer: proving it, and claiming more than the contract pays