Jettison in Marine Insurance Calculator

Marine Insurance Jettison & Sacrifice Calculator

Quantify direct financial claim weights, absolute risk balances, and General Average compensation splits for cargo intentionally thrown overboard.

1. The Jettison Sacrifice (The Claim)

Value of Jettisoned Cargo ($) The invoice value (CIF + 10%) of your cargo thrown overboard.

Stowage Location Ledger

2. Total Post-Casualty Enterprise Values

To determine your net return, we must evaluate the surviving assets that must contribute to your loss.

Surviving Ship/Hull Value ($)

Surviving Cargo Value ($) Excluding the value of the jettisoned lot.

Surviving Collectible Freight ($)

Accounting Component	Financial Calculation Value	Dynamic Mathematical Basis
Total Contributory Pool	–	Surviving Assets + Your Jettisoned Asset Value.
General Average Rate (%)	–	Proportion of total maritime sacrifice relative to the entire voyage value.
Your Proportional Self-Contribution	–	The amount you must pay toward your own loss as a stakeholder.
Third-Party Collections Owed	–	Net recovery from the Shipowner, Freight, and other Cargo interests.

The Mathematical Reality of Jettison Claims

When a ship captain orders cargo to be thrown into the sea, a clear conflict of interest emerges under maritime transit protocols: one shipper’s assets are completely destroyed to secure the safety of everyone else’s property. To eliminate unfair financial damage, maritime law treats jettison as a classic **General Average sacrifice** under the international York-Antwerp Rules.

A common misconception is that the shipowner or the party whose cargo was jettisoned takes a complete financial loss. In reality, the financial weight of the lost cargo is distributed across every single interest that survived the journey. The party who suffered the jettison contributes to their own loss proportionally, while collecting the rest from the remaining stakeholders.

The General Average Mathematical Framework for Jettison

The processing engine calculates claim returns using an exact accounting flow:

Step 1: Reconstructing the Contributory Base: The law requires adding the value of the sacrificed cargo back into the total value of the surviving maritime assets. This creates the overall Contributory Value Matrix. Why? Because if the sacrificed asset had not been thrown overboard, it would have arrived safely alongside the rest of the items.
Step 2: Deriving the Voyage Burn Rate: The absolute value of the jettisoned cargo is divided by this expanded global contributory pool to extract the exact percentage rate of the general average loss.
Step 3: Calculating Self-Contribution vs. True Recovery: If your cargo was valued at $450,000 and the calculated voyage loss rate is 2%, your cargo’s internal responsibility is 2% of its own value ($9,000). Your marine insurer will then collect the remaining 98% ($441,000) from the underwriting funds representing the ship hull, the freight balances, and the other surviving cargo owners.

The On-Deck Stowage Legal Exclusion: Under Rule I of the York-Antwerp Rules, no jettison of cargo shall be made good as general average unless such cargo was carried in accordance with recognized trade customs. If your container was stowed **on-deck** without explicit agreement or trade custom coverage, it may be excluded from general average adjustments, forcing you to seek standard recourse under specialized insurance endorsements.

Underwriting Checklist Criteria for Jettison Adjustments

Marine insurance adjusters verify three core compliance metrics before approving a jettison claim for general average recovery:

1. Preservation of the Adventure: The jettison must have been executed for the explicit purpose of saving the ship and crew from a real, active threat of total destruction—not merely to clear space or manage non-hazardous operational delays.

2. Reasonable and Controlled Action: The selection and discarding of items must be a controlled decision by the commanding crew. Accidental loss of cargo washing overboard during a storm is classified as a *Particular Average* loss (a standard weather claim) rather than a dynamic Jettison sacrifice.