delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is а maritime case about a train wreck. A shipment of machinery from Australia was destined for Huntsville, Alabama. The intercontinental journey was uneventful, and the machinery reached the United States unharmed. But the train carrying the machinery on its final, inland leg derailed, causing extensive damage. The machinery’s owner sued the railroad. The railroad seeks shelter in two liability limitations contained in contracts that upstream carriers negotiated for the machinery’s delivery.
I
This controversy arises from two bills of lading (essentially, contracts) for the transportation of goods from Australia to Alabama. A bill of lading records that a carrier has recеived goods from the party that wishes to ship them, *19 states the terms of carriage, and serves as evidence of the contract for carriage. See 2 T. Schoenbaum, Admiralty and Maritime Law 58-60 (3d ed. 2001) (hereinafter Schoenbaum); Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (COGSA), 49 Stat. 1208, 46 U. S. C. App. § 1303. Respondent James N. Kirby, Pty Ltd. (Kirby), an Australian manufacturing company, sold 10 containers of machinery to the General Motors plant located outside Huntsville, Alabama. Kirby hired International Cargo Control (ICC), an Australian freight forwarding company, to arrange for delivery by “through” (i e., end-to-end) transportation. (A freight forwarding company arranges for, coordinates, and facilitates cаrgo transport, but does not itself transport cargo.) To formalize their contract for carriage, ICC issued a bill of lading to Kirby (ICC bill). The bill designates Sydney, Australia, as the port of loading, Savannah, Georgia, as the port of discharge, and Huntsville as the ultimate destination for delivery.
In negotiating the ICC bill, Kirby had the opportunity to declare the full value of the machinery and to have ICC assume liability for that value. Cf.
New York, N. H. & H. R. Co.
v.
Nothnagle,
“Neither the carrier nor the ship shall in any event be or become liable for any loss or damage to or in connection with the transportation of goods in an amount exceeding $500 per package lawful money of the United States . . . unless the nature and value of such goods *20 have been declared by the shipper before shipment and inserted in the bill of lading.” 46 U. S. C. App. § 1304(5).
For the land leg, in turn, the bill limits the carrier’s liability to a higher amount. 1 So thаt other downstream parties expected to take part in the contract’s execution could benefit from the liability limitations, the bill also contains a so-called “Himalaya Clause.” 2 It provides:
“These conditions [for limitations on liability] apply whenever claims relating to the performance of the contract evidenced by this [bill of lading] are made against any servant, agent or other person (including any independent contractor) whose services have been used in order to perform the contract.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 59a, cl. 10.1.
*21 Meanwhile, Kirby separately insured the cargo for its true value with its co-respondent in this cаse, Allianz Australia Insurance' Ltd. (formerly MMI General Insurance, Ltd.).
Having been hired by Kirby, and because it does not itself actually transport cargo, ICC then hired Hamburg Südamer-ikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft Eggert & Amsinck (Hamburg Süd), a German ocean shipping company, to transport the containers. To formalize their contract for carriage, Hamburg Süd issued its own bill of lading to ICC (Hamburg Süd bill). That bill designates Sydney as the port of loading, Savannah as the port of discharge, and Huntsville as the ultimate destination for delivery. It adopts COGSA’s default rule in limiting the liability of Hamburg Süd, the bill’s designated carrier, to $500 per package. See 46 U. S. C. App. § 1304(5). It also contains a clause extеnding that liability limitation beyond the “tackles” — that is, to potential damage on land as well as on sea. Finally, it too contains a Himalaya Clause extending the benefit of its liability limitation to “all agents . . . (including inland) carriers . . . and all independent contractors whatsoever.” App. 63, cl. 5(b).
Acting through a subsidiary, Hamburg Süd hired petitioner Norfolk Southern Railway Company (Norfolk) to transport the machinery from the Savannah port to Huntsville. The Norfolk train carrying the machinery derailed en route, causing an alleged $1.5 million in damages. Kirby’s insurance company reimbursed Kirby for the loss. Kirby and its insurer then sued Norfolk in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, assеrting diversity jurisdiction and alleging tort and contract claims. In its answer, Norfolk argued, among other things, that Kirby’s potential recovery could not exceed the amounts set forth in the liability limitations contained in the bills of lading for the machinery’s carriage.
The District Court granted Norfolk’s motion for partial summary judgment, holding that Norfolk’s liability was lim *22 ited to $500 per container. Upon a joint motion from Norfolk and Kirby, the District Court certified its decision for interlocutory review pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1292(b).
A divided panel of the Eleventh Circuit reversed. It held that Norfolk could not claim protection under the Himalaya Clause in the first contract, the ICC bill. It construed the language of the clausе to exclude parties, like Norfolk, that had not been in privity with ICC when ICC issued the bill.
II
The courts below appear to have decided this case on an assumption, shared by the parties, that federal rather than state law governs the interpretation of the two bills of lading. Respondents now object. They emphasize that, at bottom, this is a diversity case involving tort and contract claims arising out of a rail accident somewhere between Savannah and Huntsville. We think, however, borrowing from Justice Harlan, that “the situation presented here has a more genuinely salty flavor than that.”
Kossick
v.
United Fruit Co.,
Our authority to make decisional law for the interpretation of maritime contracts stems from the Constitution’s grant of admiralty jurisdiction to. federal courts. See Art. III, § 2, cl. 1 (providing that the federal judicial power shall extend to “all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction”). See 28 U. S. C. § 1333(1) (granting federal district courts original jurisdiction over “[a]ny civil case of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction”); R. Fallon, D. Meltzer, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 733-738 (5th ed. 2003). This suit was properly brought in diversity, but it could also be sustained under the admiralty jurisdiction by virtue of thé maritime contracts involved. See
Pope & Talbot, Inc.
v.
Hawn,
Applying the two-step analysis from
Kossick,
we find that federal law governs this contract dispute. Our cases do not draw clean lines between maritime and nonmaritime contracts. We have recognized that “[t]he boundaries of admiralty jurisdiction over contracts — as opposed to torts or crimes — being conceptual rather than spatial, have always been difficult to draw.”
The ICC and Hamburg Süd bills are maritime contracts because their primary objective is to accomplish the transportation of goods by sea from Australia to the eastern coast of the United States. See G. Gilmore & C. Black, Law of Admiralty 31 (2d ed. 1975) (“Ideally, the [admiralty] jurisdiction [over contracts ought] to include those and only those things principally connected with maritime transportation” (emphasis deleted)). To be sure, the two bills call for some performance on land; the final leg of the machinery’s journey to Huntsville was by rail. But under a conceptual rather than spatial approach, this fact does not alter the essentially maritime nature of the contracts.
In
Kossick,
for example, we held that a shipowner’s promise to assume responsibility for any improper treatment his seaman might receive at a New York hospital was a maritime contract. The seaman had asked the shipowner to pay for treatment by a private physician, but the shipowner, preferring the cheaper public hospital, offered to cover the costs of any complications that might arise from treatment there. We characterized his promise as a “fringe benefit” to a shipowner’s duty in maritime law to provide “ ‘maintenance and
*25
cure.’ ”
We have reiterated that the “ ‘fundamental interest giving rise to maritime jurisdiction is “thé protection of maritime
commerce”’”’ Exxon, supra,
at 608 (emphasis added) (quoting
Sisson
v.
Ruby,
Contracts reflect the new technology, hence the popularity of “through” bills of lading, in which cargo owners can con *26 tract for transportation across oceans and to inland destinations in a single transaction. See 1 Schoenbaum 595. Put simply, it is to Kirby’s advantage to arrange for transport from Sydney to Huntsville in one bill of lading, rather than to negotiate a separate contract — and to find an American railroad itself — for the land leg. The popularity of that efficient choice, to assimilate land legs into international ocean bills of lading, should not render bills for ocean carriage non-maritime contracts.
Some lower federal courts appear to have taken a spatial approach when deciding whether intermodal transportation contracts for intercontinental shipping are maritime in nature. They have held that admiralty jurisdiction does not extend to contracts which require maritime and nonmaritime transportation, unless the nonmaritime transportation is merely incidental — and that long-distance land travel is not incidental. See,
e. g., Hartford Fire Ins. Co.
v.
Orient Overseas Containers Lines (UK) Ltd.,
Furthermore, to the extent that these lower court decisions fashion a rule for identifying maritime contracts that depends solely on geography, they are inconsistent with the conceptual approach our precedent requires. See Kossick, supra, at 735. Conceptually, so long as a bill of lading requires substantial carriage of goods by seа, its purpose is to effectuate maritime commerce — and thus it is a maritime contract. Its character as a maritime contract is not defeated simply because it also provides for some land carriage. Geography, then, is useful in a conceptual inquiry only in a limited sense: If a bill’s sea components are insubstantial, then the bill is not a maritime contract.
Having established that the ICC and Hamburg Slid bills are maritime contracts, then, we must clear a second hurdle before applying federal law in their interpretation. Is this case inherently local? For. not “every term in every maritime contract can only be controlled by some fedеrally defined admiralty rule.”
Wilburn Boat Co.
v.
Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co.,
Here, our touchstone is a concern for the uniform meaning of maritime contracts like the ICC and Hamburg Süd bills. We have explained that Article Ill’s grant of admiralty jurisdiction “ ‘must have referred to a system оf law coextensive with, and operating uniformly in, the whole country. It certainly could not have been the intention to place the rules and limits of maritime law under the disposal and regulation of the several States, as that would have defeated the uniformity and consistency at which the Constitution aimed on all subjects of a commercial character affecting the intercourse of the States with each other or with foreign states.’ ”
American Dredging Co.
v.
Miller,
Applying state law to cases like this one would undermine the uniformity of general maritime law. The same liability limitation in a single bill of lading for international inter-modal transportation often applies both to sea and to land, as is true of the Hamburg Süd bill. Such liability clauses are regularly executed around the world. See 1 Schoenbaum 595; Wood, Multimodal Transportation: An American Perspective on Carrier Liability and Bill of Lading Issues, 46 Am. J. Comp. L. 403, 407 (Supp. 1998). See also
*29
46 U. S. C. App. § 1307 (permitting parties to extend the COGSA default liability limit to damage done “prior to the loading on and subsequent to the discharge from the ship”). Likewise, a single Himalaya Clause can cover both sea and land carriers downstream, as is true of the ICC bill. See Part III-A,
infra.
Confusion and inefficiency will inevitably result if more than one body of law governs a given contract’s meaning. As we said in
Kossick,
when “a [maritime] contract . . . may well have been made anywhere in the world,” it “should be judged by one law wherever it was made.”
In protecting the uniformity of federal maritime law, we also reinforce the liability regime Congress established in COGSA. By its terms, COGSA governs bills of lading for the carriage of goods “from the time when the goods are loaded on to the time when they are discharged from the ship.” 46 U. S. C. App. § 1301(e). For that period, COGSA’s “package limitation” operates as a default rule. §1304(5). But COGSA also gives the option of extending its rule by contract. See §1307 (“Nothing contained in this chapter shall prevent a carrier or a shipper from entering into any agreement, stipulation, condition, reservation, or exemption as to the responsibility and liability of the carrier or the ship for the loss or damage to or in connection with the custody and care and handling of goods prior to the loading on and subsequent to the discharge from the ship on which the goods are carried by sea”). As COGSA permits, Hamburg Süd in its bill of lading chose tо extend the default rule to the entire period in which the machinery would be under its responsibility, including the period of the inland transport. Hamburg Süd would not enjoy the efficiencies of the default rule if the liability limitation it chose did not apply equally to all legs of the journey for which it undertook responsibility. And the apparent purpose of COGSA, to facilitate efficient contracting in contracts for carriage by sea, would be defeated.
*30 III
A
Turning to the merits, we begin with the ICC bill of lading, the first of the contracts at issue. Kirby and ICC made a contract for the carriage of machinery from Sydney to Huntsville, and agreed to limit the liability of ICC and other parties who would participate in transporting the machinery. The bill’s Himalaya Clause states:
“These conditions [for limitations on liability] apply whenever claims relating to the performance of the contract evidenced by this [bill of lading] are made against any servant, agent or other person (including any inde-' pendent contractor) whose services have been used in order to perform the contract.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 59a, cl. 10.1 (emphasis added).
The question presented is whether the liability limitation in Kirby’s and ICC’s contract extends to Norfolk, which is ICC’s sub-subcontractor. The Circuits have split in answering this question. Compare,
e. g., Akiyama Corp. of America
v.
M. V. Hanjin Marseilles,
This is a simple question of contract interpretation. It turns only on whether the Eleventh Circuit correctly applied this Court’s decision in
Robert C. Herd & Co.
v.
Krawill Machinery Corp.,
The Eleventh Circuit, like respondents, made much of the
Herd
decision. Deriving a principle of narrow construction from
Herd,
the Court of Appeals concluded that the language of the ICC bill’s Himalaya Clause is too vague to clearly includе Norfolk.
The Court of Appeals’ ruling is not true to the contract language or to the intent of the parties. The plain language of the Himalaya Clause indicates an intent to extend the liability limitation broadly — to
“any
servant, agent or other person (including
any
indeрendent contractor)” whose services contribute to performing the contract. App. to Pet. for Cert. 59a, cl. 10.1 (emphasis added). “Read naturally, the word ‘any’ has an expansive meaning, that is, ‘one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind.’ ”
United States
v.
Gonzales,
B
The question arising from the Hamburg Süd bill of lading is more difficult. It requires us to set an efficient default rule for certain shipping contracts, a task that has been a challenge fоr courts for centuries. See, e. g., Hadley v. Baxendale, 9 Exch. 341, 156 Eng. Rep. 145 (1854). ICC and Hamburg Süd agreed that Hamburg Süd would transport the machinery from Sydney to Huntsville, and agreed to the COGSA “package limitation” on the liability of Hamburg Süd, its agents, and its independent contractors. The second question presented is whether that liability limitation, which ICC negotiated, prevents Kirby from suing Norfolk (Hamburg Süd’s independent contractor) for more. As we have explained, the liability limitation in the ICC bill, the first contract, sets liability for a land accident higher than this bill does. See n. 1, supra. Because Norfolk’s liability will be lower if it is protected by the Hamburg Süd bill too, we must reach this second question in order to give Norfolk the full relief for which it petitioned.
*33 To interpret the Hamburg Slid bill, we turn to a rule drawn from our precedent about common carriage: When an intermediary contracts with a carrier to transport goods, the cargo owner’s recovery against the carrier is limited by the liability limitation to which the intermediary and carrier agreed. The intermediary is certainly not automatically empowered to be the cargo owner’s agent in every sense. That would be unsustainable. But when it comes to liability limitations for negligence resulting in damage, an intermediary can negotiate reliable and enforceable agreements with the carriers it engages.
We derive this rule from our dеcision about common carriage in
Great Northern R. Co.
v.
O’Connor,
Respondents object to our reading of
Great Northern,
and argue that this Court should fashion the federal rule of decision from general agency law principles. Like the Eleventh Circuit, respondents reason that Kirby cannot be bound by the bill of lading that ICC negotiated with Hamburg Slid unless ICC was then acting as Kirby’s agent. Other Courts of Appeals have also applied agency law to cases similar to this one. See,
e. g., Kukje Hwajae Ins. Co.
v.
The M/V Hyundai Liberty,
We think reliance on agency law is misplaced here. It is undeniable that the traditional indicia of agency, a fiduciary relationship and effective control by the principal, did not exist between Kirby and ICC. See Restatement (Second) of Agency § 1 (1957). But that is of no moment. The principle derived from
Great Northern
does not require treating ICC as Kirby’s agent in the classic sense. It only requires treating ICC as Kirby’s agent for a
single, limited
purpose: when ICC contracts with subsequent carriers for limitation on liability. In holding that an intermediary binds a cargo owner to the liability limitations it negotiates with downstream carriers, we do not infringe on traditional agency principles. We merely ensure the reliability of downstream contracts for liability limitatiоns. In
Great Northern,
because the intermediary had been “entrusted with goods to be shipped by railway, and, nothing to the contrary appearing, the carrier had the right to assume that [the intermediary] could agree upon the terms of the shipment.”
Respondents also contend that any decision binding Kirby to the Hamburg Slid bill’s liability limitation will be disastrous for the international shipping industry. Various participants in the industry have weighed in as amici on both sides in this case, and we must make a close call. It would be idle to pretend that the industry can easily be chаracterized, or that efficient default rules can easily be discerned. In the final balance, however, we disagree with respondents for three reasons.
First, we believe that a limited agency rule tracks industry practices. In intercontinental ocean shipping, carriers may not know if they are dealing with an intermediary, rather
*35
than with a cargo owner. Even if knowingly dealing with an intermediary, they may not know how many other intermediaries came before, or what obligations may be outstanding among them. If the Eleventh Circuit’s rule were the law, carriers would have to seek out more information before contracting, so as to assure themselves thаt their contractual liability limitations provide true protection. That task of information gathering might be very costly or even impossible, given that goods often change hands many times in the course of intermodal transportation. See 1 Schoenbaum 589; Wood,
Second, if liability limitations negotiated with cargo owners were reliable while limitations negotiated with intermediaries were not, carriers would likely want to charge the latter higher rates. A rule prompting downstream carriers to distinguish between cargo owners and intermediary shippers might interfere with statutory and decisional law promoting nondiscrimination in common carriage. Cf.
ICC
v.
Delaware, L. & W. R. Co.,
Finally, as in
Great Northern,
our decision produces an equitable result. See
*36 IV
We hold that Norfolk is entitled to the protection of the liability limitations in the two bills of lading. Having undertaken this analysis, we recognize that our decision does no more than provide a legal backdrop against which future bills of lading will be negotiated. It is not, of course, this Court’s task to structure the international shipping industry. Future parties remain free to adapt their contracts to the rules set forth here, only now with the benefit of greater predictability concerning the rules for. which their contracts might compensate.
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded ■for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Notes
The bill provides that “the Freight Forwarder shall in no event be or become liable for any loss of or damage to the goods in an amount exceeding the equivalent of 666.67 SDR per package or unit or 2 SDR per kilo-gramme of gross weight of the goods lost or damaged, whichever is the higher, unless the nature and value of the goods shall have been declared by the Consignor.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 57a, cl. 8.3. An SDR, or Special Drawing Right, is a unit of account created by the International Monetary Fund and calculated daily on the basis of a basket of currencies. Liability computed per package for the 10 containers, for example, was approximately $17,373 when the bill of lading issued in June 1997, $17,231 when the goods were damaged on October 9, 1997, and $9,763 when the case was argued. See International Monetary Fund Exchange Rate Archives, http://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/rates/param_rms_mth.cfm (as visited Nov. 5, 2004, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). Respondents claim that liability computed by weight is higher. The machinery’s weight is not in the record. In any case, because we conclude that Norfolk is also protected by the $500 per package limit in the second bill of lading at issue here, see Part III — B, infra, and thus cannot be liable for more than $5,000 for the 10 containers, each holding one machine, the precise liability under the ICC bill of lading does not matter.
Clauses extending liability limitations take their name from an English case involving a steamship called Himalaya. See Adler v. Dickson, [1955] 1 Q. B. 158 (C. A.).