To most people the ship agent will be the one that takes care of clearing the ship in and out of port. He becomes the ships local representative when it comes to Government and customers. In some cases you can find two ship agents handle the ship while in port. It is usually an agent representing the shipper and one representing the ship owner. In this case the shipper is the one that pays for his cargo to be sent with the ship owners ship. In other words he is the customer. In high value shipments there is always a good idea to have a representative present during the loading of the vessel to look after ones interest.

A ship agent will take care of all the paper work that goes with taking a ship in and out of port. The ship agent will look after all fees that are due to the port and long shore men. These are the people doing the actual loading or unloading of the ship. He will make sure that the local customs office is kept up to date with all custom transactions. He will coordinate the requests that come from the people he is representing. It might be a demand for doctor appointments for some crew members. It might be a demand for visa from a joining crew member that want to joint the ship while in port. A lot of the work that an agent is doing is also done before the ship comes to port.

Underlying responsibilities are much more than this and the boarding clerk that physically handles the ship might do a lot more than this if he also looks after the shippers of the cargo. There are a lot of details that we will not cover in this article but it is safe to say that a ship agent can be a very busy person.

In this brief introduction to the Marine Agent in the Maritime community in Canada we have just touched base on this subject and we do intend to write more about it at a later date.