Definition
Memorandum articles are goods or commodities identified in a marine insurance policy as subject to a modified or limited form of coverage, typically excluding the insurer's liability for partial losses (particularly average losses) unless the partial loss results from the vessel sinking, stranding, or burning. The memorandum clause, in which these articles are listed, was a standard feature of older marine insurance policies and functioned as a carve-out from the general average and particular average protections otherwise available to the insured.
The practical effect of the memorandum clause was to protect underwriters from frequent and difficult-to-verify claims on perishable or fragile cargo. Goods listed as memorandum articles were typically perishable by nature—such as grain, fish, fruit, salt, and similar commodities—or inherently susceptible to damage in transit independent of any maritime casualty. Because such goods might arrive in diminished condition due to their own properties rather than any insurable peril, underwriters historically refused to bear partial loss liability for them unless a total constructive or actual loss resulted, or unless the damage arose from one of the enumerated catastrophic events specified in the policy.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with historical marine insurance documents, cargo disputes, or early admiralty cases will encounter the memorandum clause with some regularity. The term is almost entirely a creature of historical marine insurance practice; it does not appear as a live operative concept in modern standardized insurance forms, which have replaced the old memorandum structure with more granular exclusions and franchise clauses. This means the term is heavily concentrated in sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a researcher who encounters it in a case or policy from that era should not expect modern insurance treatises to illuminate it directly.
A key research trap: the word "memorandum" in a legal or commercial document of that period may refer to this specific insurance clause, to a general contractual memorandum, or to a bill of lading notation. Context is essential. In admiralty and cargo cases, "memorandum" almost always signals the insurance clause; in transactional or agency law contexts, it carries its ordinary contractual meaning.
The connection between memorandum articles and the law of average is important. Researchers following a trail from memorandum articles will need to understand the distinction between general average (a shared loss allocated among all parties to a voyage) and particular average (a partial loss falling on a single party). The memorandum clause was specifically designed to limit the insurer's exposure to particular average on enumerated goods. Without that background, the clause's function is opaque.
Jurisdictional variation in how courts construed the memorandum clause—particularly which goods fell within its scope and what counted as a stranding or sinking sufficient to trigger liability despite the clause—generated a substantial body of eighteenth and nineteenth century case law in both English and American courts. American courts did not always follow English interpretations precisely, so researchers should treat English precedent from this period as persuasive rather than controlling in American admiralty contexts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje and Lawrence identify memorandum articles as goods "enumerated in the memorandum clause of a policy of insurance," describing the clause's function as exempting the insurer from liability for average losses on those goods "unless occasioned by the ship's being stranded, sunk, or burnt." This formulation tracks the standard language of Lloyd's policies and similar instruments from the period and is consistent with how English and American treatise writers of the era understood the term.
The definition is narrow and accurate for its time but offers no guidance on how courts resolved the perennial disputes about what constituted a "stranding" sufficient to trigger liability, or whether certain goods fell within or outside the enumerated list. Researchers needing that level of detail must go beyond the dictionary to contemporaneous treatises on marine insurance—Arnould on Marine Insurance and Phillips on Insurance being the standard authorities—and to reported admiralty decisions.
Historical sources uniformly treat the memorandum clause as a settled and familiar feature of marine insurance; there is no significant disagreement among them about its basic operation. What the sources do not address is the clause's eventual obsolescence and replacement by modern exclusion structures, which requires consulting twentieth-century insurance law scholarship.
Jurisdictional Note
The memorandum clause was common to both English and American marine insurance practice, but American courts occasionally construed the triggering events (stranding, sinking, burning) more narrowly or broadly than their English counterparts. Researchers working on pre-twentieth century American admiralty disputes should verify whether the relevant court followed English authority or departed from it on the specific interpretive question at issue.