The call comes from the manning agency. Your son, your husband, your brother is “missing”. He was not found on board after a search. The ship has informed the authorities. Then, often within days, a suggestion appears: he may have jumped overboard. Soon after that, the insurer or the company says the death was suicide, and that the claim is not payable.
There is no note. Nobody saw him go over the side. There is no body. Yet the word suicide is already in the file.
This article explains why a seafarer who is missing at sea cannot simply be treated as having taken his own life, how the family can prove his death without a body, and what to do in the first weeks. If the death has been called suicide in a case where there is a note or other evidence, see our separate article: When a seafarer’s death is called suicide.
Suicide is never presumed. A party that wants to refuse compensation because the death was suicide must prove it, with evidence. “He may have jumped” is a guess. It is not evidence.
Even if it were proved that he went over the side, that would not prove that he meant to. A seafarer can be lost overboard in many ways:
Where the facts are equally consistent with an accident and with suicide, the party that carries the burden of proving suicide fails.
The clearest guidance we have found comes from the Supreme Court of the Philippines. In each case we have read where the employer succeeded in proving suicide, it had direct evidence of the act:
In every one of these, the burden was on the employer, and the employer met it only because it had something real to show. Where there is no witness, no note and no body, the employer has nothing of that kind.
Because the burden is on them, companies sometimes try to build the evidence later. A master’s report or a log entry may describe the seafarer as having “jumped overboard” or as a “suspected suicide”, even though nobody saw anything.
Ask for the original log pages, not typed extracts. Ask when each entry was written, by whom, and on what information. An entry written hours after the event, by someone who saw nothing, is an opinion. It is not evidence of what happened.
Families are sometimes told that nothing can be done for seven years. That is not correct for a seafarer lost at sea.
Section 111 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 does contain a rule about a person who “has not been heard of for seven years”. But that is a fallback for cases where nothing else is known. In LIC of India v. Anuradha (26 March 2004), the Supreme Court explained that the presumption arises only after seven years and says nothing about when the person died. The time of death is to be decided “on evidence-direct or circumstantial and not by assumption or presumption”.
For a man lost from a ship at sea, the circumstantial evidence is usually strong: the time he was last seen on board, a full search of the ship, a sea search coordinated by the rescue authorities, and the end of that search without finding him. A family can rely on these facts to prove death without waiting seven years.
Some collective agreements go further. They provide that if a seafarer goes missing at sea during his employment, the same amount is paid as for death, unless the company proves one of the listed exceptions. Under a clause of that kind, the family does not even need to prove death. Disappearance from the ship at sea is enough. Ask for the collective agreement at once and read that clause.
Defeating the suicide label does not by itself win every kind of claim. In Mackinnon Mackenzie v. Ibrahim Mahommed Issak (14 August 1969), a deck-hand went missing from his ship during the night and was never found. The employer argued that suicide was more likely. That argument was rejected. Even so, the family’s claim under the Workmen’s Compensation Act failed, because the Supreme Court held that the person claiming must prove that the death arose out of the employment, and that a Commissioner “must not surmise, conjecture or guess”.
Two lessons follow. First, a family should gather facts that link the loss to the work: whether he was on watch or working on deck, whether the ship was under way, the weather, the condition of the rails, and how tired he was. Second, the claim under the employment agreement and the collective agreement is a different claim with different rules, and it should be pressed separately.
Under Section 9 of the Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) Act, 2017, a claim for “loss of life or personal injury occurring, whether on land or on water, in direct connection with the operation of the vessel” is a maritime lien. It stays with the ship even if she is sold or changes flag. But it is extinguished after one year unless, within that year, the ship is arrested and the arrest leads to a sale by the High Court. Where the ship or her owner refuses to pay, an arrest at an Indian port can bring them to the table. The one-year clock should be noted on the day the seafarer goes missing.
This article is for general information only. It does not constitute legal advice, and no lawyer-client relationship arises from it. Every claim turns on its own contract, flag and facts. If your family is dealing with a seafarer missing at sea, please contact the firm directly.
For specific questions on a matter, rather than general commentary, please contact the firm directly.