Cap. 234 Art. 290Carriage of grain. 

(1) Where grain is loaded on board any Maltese ship, or is loaded within any port in Malta on board any ship, all necessary and reasonable precautions shall be taken to prevent the grain from shifting; and if such precautions as aforesaid are not taken, the owner, or bareboat charterer or the master of the ship, or any agent of the owner, or bareboat charterer who was charged with the loading or with sending the ship to sea laden with the grain, shall be guilty of an offence under this sub-article and the ship shall be deemed, for the purposes of this Part of this Act, to be unsafe by reason of improper loading.

(2) Where any ship, having been loaded with grain outside Malta without taking all necessary and reasonable precautions to prevent the grain from shifting, enters any port in Malta so laden, the owner, or bareboat charterer, or master of the ship shall be guilty of an offence under this sub-article and the ship shall be deemed for the purposes of this Part of this Act to be unsafe by reason of improper loading: Provided that this sub-article shall not have effect if the ship would not have entered any such port but for stress of weather or any other circumstances which neither the master nor the owner nor the charterer (if any) could have prevented or forestalled.

(3) Without prejudice to the generality of the two preceding sub-articles, any particular precaution prescribed by rules made by the Minister under this sub-article, in relation to the loading of ships generally or of ships of any class, as being a precaution to be treated for the purposes of those sub-articles as a necessary or reasonable precaution to prevent grain from shifting, shall be so treated in the case of ships generally or of ships of that class, as the case may be:

Provided that this sub-article shall not apply when a ship is loaded in accordance in all respects with any provisions approved by the Minister as respects the loading in question other than rules made under this sub-article.

(4) If any person commits an offence under sub-article (1) or sub-article (2), he shall for each offence be liable to a fine (multa) not exceeding three hundred units.

(5) On the arrival at any port in Malta from a port outside Malta of any ship carrying a cargo of grain, the master shall cause to be delivered to the Minister a notice stating -

(a) the draught of water and freeboard, as defined by this Part of this Act, of the said ship after the loading of her cargo was completed at the final port of loading; and

(b) the following particulars of the grain carried, namely -

(i) the kind of grain and the quantity thereof, stated in metric units of volume or weight;

(ii) the mode in which the grain is stowed; and

(iii) the precautions taken to prevent the grain from shifting; and if the master fails to deliver any notice required by this sub-article, or if in any such notice he makes any statement that he knows to be false in a material particular or recklessly makes any statement that is false in any material particular, he shall for each offence be liable to a fine (multa) not exceeding one hundred units.

(6) Any person having a general or special authority in that behalf from the Minister may, for securing the observance of the provisions of this article, inspect any grain and the mode in which it is stowed, and for those purposes he shall have all the powers of a surveyor of ships.

(7) In this article, the expression "grain" includes wheat, maize, oats, rye, barley, rice, pulses and seeds; and the expression "ship carrying a cargo of grain" means a ship carrying a quantity of grain exceeding one-third of the ship’s registered tonnage, reckoning one hundred cubic feet or two tons weight of grain as equivalent to one ton of registered tonnage.