The ink on Chancery Row was barely dry before the ink on Guildhall Terrace began to flow.

By 2:00 PM on Tuesday — less than three hours after the Transit Corridor Framework was signed — twelve of the fourteen member firms of the Bobington Insurance Exchange had formally notified the Exchange’s marine committee that they would resume underwriting cargo on Kaelmar-route vessels. The first new policies are expected to be issued by Thursday.

Sybil Tremayne, the senior underwriter at Fairweather & Chalk who chairs the Exchange’s marine committee, confirmed the figures from the Exchange’s offices on Guildhall Terrace. “Twelve firms have submitted their schedules of terms,” she said. “All are consistent with the Framework’s insurance provisions. Premiums are capped at one hundred and forty per cent of pre-crisis rates for the duration of the three-month trial period, with an automatic extension to one hundred and sixty per cent if the trial is renewed.”

The two firms withholding are understood to be Harbourside Mutual and Blackwell & Pierce, both smaller underwriters with limited marine portfolios. Neither firm issued a public statement. A source familiar with the Exchange’s deliberations said their reservations were “commercial rather than political” — a question of risk appetite rather than diplomatic principle.

The resumption of underwriting removes the last practical barrier to commercial traffic through the strait. During the five-week crisis, shipping insurance for Kaelmar routes became effectively unavailable, forcing vessel operators to reroute via the Cape of Sarenne at an estimated additional cost of 2.3 million florins across the fleet. Claims from the diversion period total approximately 580,000 florins, of which fewer than half have been settled.

“The insurance market does not celebrate,” Mrs Tremayne said, when asked whether the signing represented a turning point. “It calculates. The Framework provides a calculable risk. That is what we require.”

Copper closed at 741 florins per tonne on Tuesday — the nineteenth consecutive daily decline, reflecting markets that had been pricing in a resolution for weeks. The Eastern Spice Index fell to 268. Clement Varga of Fernwich Trading House described the commodity reaction as “the gentlest landing in recent memory. The hard work was done in the corridors.”

Guildmaster Phineas Craddock of the Merchants’ Guild issued a statement welcoming the signing and calling for “an expeditious return to normal commercial flows.” He noted that the Guild’s Spice Crisis Committee, chaired by Haroun Nazari, would remain in place until reserves and pricing had fully normalised.

The first commercial transit is expected within a fortnight, pending manifest submissions to the Joint Maritime Inspection Commission’s secretariat in Fenmouth. Vessel operators with existing cargo ready for loading could, in principle, submit manifests as early as Wednesday.

For the insurance market, the question now shifts from whether to underwrite to how much business will flow. Mrs Tremayne was characteristically precise: “We don’t insure hope. We insure cargo. There is about to be a great deal of cargo.”