Fifty years after the epoch-defining Torrey Canyon disaster, attention has focused on how the first oil tanker spill played out in clear public view shaped a regulatory response that has reverberated ever since.
Dropping napalm from jets in a futile attempt to burn off some of the 120,000 tonnes of Kuwaiti crude that spilled onto the white sands and rocks of the Isles of Scilly off Cornwall, southwest England, in March 1967 may have seemed a smart idea at the time.
Yet it is just part of the story that history now judges as reckless in the extreme. Some of the footnotes have proved equally revealing, not least the arrest of a sistership in Singapore, as the British government tried to extract compensation from the Torrey Canyon’s owner, Union Oil Co of California.
The UK authorities asked lawyers in Singapore to be on the alert for sistership Lake Palourde, which they wanted to arrest for compensation for the clean-up operation.
Anthony (Tony) O’Connor — a partner at Singapore law firm Drew & Napier who took early retirement and started a practice in Cornwall — is credited with arresting the vessel. However, that distinction in fact goes to his former colleague, the late Joseph Grimberg.
When Grimberg died on August 17 at the age of 84, Singapore law minister K Shanmugam described him as “one of the best Singapore has ever seen... a consummate gentleman, both at the Bar, and outside”. Drew & Napier executive chairman Davinder Singh said: “In life, as in the law, he won all the prizes for integrity, humanity and humility.”
Speaking to TW+ earlier this year about the events of 1967, Grimberg said he received instructions from the Treasury Solicitor in London, then asked a master mariner who worked with lawyers in Admiralty cases, Captain Richards, to look out for the Lake Palourde if it came into Singapore territorial waters.
A few weeks later, Grimberg was called at 6.30am by Capt Richards with the news the tanker had dropped anchor off Singapore. He dashed to his office to prepare the legal papers, which were promptly authorised by the Registrar of the Supreme Court. Grimberg, and the sheriff then took a launch out to enforce the arrest warrant.
“As we approached, the captain of the Lake Palourde was to be seen with a fellow officer on deck,” Grimberg told TW+.
“He appeared to think that we were about to deliver supplies, and ordered the gangway to be lowered. The sheriff and I boarded, and the sheriff duly attached the warrant of arrest on the main mast, by which time I had explained our presence to the skipper.
“When he got over his surprise, the sheriff and I were invited for coffee with him, an Italian, before we left the vessel, leaving the sheriff on board. An acceptable bond was shortly posted and the Lake Palourde was released. I went on board to remove the warrant and retrieve the sheriff.”
Although Grimberg could not remember the exact amount of the bond, the compensation finally paid to the UK and France was only about £3m ($8.4m then, equivalent to around $150m today).
“There was an amusing postscript,” Grimberg added. “As our boat was sailing away from Lake Palourde, another launch was to be seen trying to catch up with it.
“Onboard was a well-known criminal lawyer, David Marshall, waving another warrant of arrest on behalf of the French government for the arrest of the Lake Palourde for damage suffered by the Brittany coast. By this time Palourde’s screws were churning up the waters of Singapore harbour and she was on her way. The French had missed her.”
Grimberg recalled that the incident had a diplomatic dimension, since at that time Britain and France were not on the best of terms. “We were told by the high commissioner here that the prime minister [Harold Wilson] was delighted when told that the French had missed the Palourde.”
Grimberg retired from Drew & Napier in 1987 after 30 years at the partnership, having been one of the first lawyers to be appointed a senior counsel in Singapore. He rejoined as a consultant in 1989 and continued to have a practice as an arbitrator and mediator. His name can now be rightfully added to the footnotes of an era-defining maritime casualty.
