Opinion of the Court а a is essential to accomplishing the contract's purpose. In this case, for example, the bills of lading required delivery to Huntsville; the Savannah port would not do. 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 sea, 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 Süd 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 federally defined admiralty rule.” Wilburn Boat Co. v. Fireman's Fund Ins. Co., 348 U. S. 310, 313 (1955) (applying state law to maritime contract for marine insurance because of state regulatory power over insurance industry). A maritime contract's interpretation may so implicate local interests as to beckon interpretation by state law. See Kossick, 365 U. S., at 735. Respondents have not articulated any specific Australian or state interest at stake, though some are surely implicated. But when state interests cannot be accommodated without defeating a federal interest, as is the case here, then federal substantive law should govern. See id., at 739 (the process of deciding whether federal law applies “is surely ... one of accommodation, entirely familiar in many areas of overlapping state and federal concern, or a process somewhat analogous to the normal conflict of laws situation where two sovereignties assert divergent interests in a transaction”); 2 Opinion of the Court Schoenbaum 61 (“'Bills of lading issued outside the United States are governed by the general maritime law, considering relevant choice of law rules'”). 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 III's grant of admiralty jurisdiction “'must have referred to a system of 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, 510 U. S. 443, 451 (1994) (quoting The Lottawanna, 21 Wall. 558, 575 (1875)). See also Yamaha Motor Corp., U. S. A. v. Calhoun, 516 U. S. 199, 210 (1996) (“[I]n several contexts, we have recognized that vindication of maritime policies demanded uniform adherence to a federal rule of decision” (citing Kossick, supra, at 742; Pope & Talbot, 346 U. S., at 409; Garrett v. MooreMcCormack Co., 317 U. S. 239, 248–249 (1942))); Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 358 U. S. 354, 373 (1959) (“[S]tate law must yield to the needs of a uniform federal maritime law when this Court finds inroads on a harmonious system[,] [b]ut this limitation still leaves the States a wide scope"). 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 intermodal 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 Opinion of the Court . . 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.” 365 U. S., at 741. Here, that one law is federal. 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 to 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. Opinion of the Court III 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 independent 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, 162 F. 3d 571, 574 (CA9 1998) (privity of contract is not required in order to benefit from a Himalaya Clause), with Mikinberg v. Baltic S. S. Co., 988 F. 2d 327, 332 (CA2 1993) (a contractual relationship is required). 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., 359 U. S. 297 (1959). We conclude that it did not. In Herd, the bill of lading between a cargo owner and carrier said that, consistent with COGSA," the Carrier's liability, if any, shall be determined on the basis of $500 per package.'” Id., at 302. The carrier then hired a stevedoring company to load the cargo onto the ship, and the stevedoring company damaged the goods. The Court held that the stevedoring company was not a beneficiary of the bill's liability limitation. Because it found no evidence in COGSA Opinion of the Court or its legislative history that Congress meant COGSA's liability limitation to extend automatically to a carrier's agents, like stevedores, the Court looked to the language of the bill of lading itself. It reasoned that a clause limiting“the Carrier's liability'” did not “indicate that the contracting parties intended to limit the liability of stevedores or other agents. . . . If such had been a purpose of the contracting parties it must be presumed that they would in some way have expressed it in the contract.” Ibid. The Court added that liability limitations must be “strictly construed and limited to intended beneficiaries.” Id., at 305. 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 include Norfolk. 300 F. 3d, at 1308. Moreover, the lower court interpreted Herd to require privity between the carrier and the party seeking shelter under a Himalaya Clause. 300 F. 3d, at 1308. But nothing in Herd requires the linguistic specificity or privity rules that the Eleventh Circuit attributes to it. The decision simply says that contracts for carriage of goods by sea must be construed like any other contracts: by their terms and consistent with the intent of the parties. If anything, Herd stands for the proposition that there is no special rule for Himalaya Clauses. 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 independent 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, 520 U. S. 1, 5 (1997) (quoting Webster's Third New International Dictionary 97 (1976)). There is no reason to con |