Craig Cunningham

Craig Cunningham is Head of Shipping and Commodities in the Cape Town office, practicing in Maritime Law. He has built a shipping practice over 30 years, advising ship owners, charterers, financiers, suppliers, hull underwriters, and P&I Clubs in contentious and non-contentious matters across Southern Africa, with a particular focus on ship arrests, casualties, mortgage foreclosures, judicial sales, and cross-border insolvencies.

Mr. Cunningham has been involved in numerous high-profile matters, including representing international banks and financiers in workouts to sell vessels in South Africa and Namibia, acting for charterers to arrest and sell cargo to satisfy arbitration awards in excess of EUR 35 million, and successfully running an LCIA arbitration part-heard in London and South Africa during the Covid-19 lockdown. He has also represented clients before the Supreme Court of Appeal in landmark shipping cases including The Forarun Naree, The Seaspan Grouse, and The NYK Isabel, and has advised on casualty facilitation following oil pollution incidents, collisions, groundings, and fires off the Southern African coast, including the Alexandros T, Oliva, and Geo Searcher.

He holds an LLM and LLB from the University of Cape Town and a BCom from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. He is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa and a qualified notary. Craig has been consistently ranked in Band 1 by Chambers Global for Shipping in South Africa for nine consecutive years (2018-2026) and inducted into The Legal 500 Hall of Fame for Shipping and Transport (2023-2026), with clients describing him as “an outstanding and knowledgeable lawyer.”