To be asked to review the third edition of this work is but inevitably to be reminded of the untimely death of Geoffrey Brice in November last year only a few months after publication. He had been a popular and successful member of the Admiralty Bar for over 35 years. In the 60s and 70s, salvage arbitrations under the auspices of Lloyd’s Standard Form furnished him with a lucrative practice, ideally suited to his interest in shipping. He was appointed a Lloyd’s arbitrator himself in 1978, taking silk a year later. It was almost inevitable, given his energy and enthusiasm, that he would turn his hand to producing a new textbook on salvage law and practice.

The first edition of his work appeared in 1983. This third edition has emerged after only 16 years. This is to be contrasted with the period of 96 years covering the five editions of the other leading work in the field, Kennedy . The explanation is not difficult to identify. For the first two-thirds of this century, the general principles of salvage law, as developed in the 19th century and codified in the Brussels Salvage Convention of 1910, were sufficiently flexible to allow for adaptation and incremental development as the era of sail evaporated, the size and value of vessels and their cargoes swelled and the scientific advances in communications shrank the world. But the last third of the century, ushered in by the loss of the Torrey Canyon in 1967, has been marked by international concern for the protection and preservation of the environment. This, together with involvement in the work of the CMI in preparing a new draft Salvage Convention in 1981, provided the catalyst for Geoffrey’s tireless efforts to show the way forward.

The pace of change, given the sort of vested interests concerned, has been breathtaking. Regular new editions of Lloyd’s Form have been at the vanguard of progress, both provoking and responding to the Diplomatic Conference that gave birth to the new Salvage Convention in 1989. It was appropriate that Geoffrey was counsel for the salvors in The Nagasaki Spirit through to the House of Lords. He was thus well placed to comment in the new edition on the implications of that decision on the award of special compensation under Art. 14.

Another invaluable feature of Geoffrey’s background, enabling him to add much comparative value to the new edition, was his status as Visiting Professor of Maritime Law at both Tulane University and the University of Natal. This is seen to particularly good effect in Chapter 4, “Wrecks, Salvage and Underwater Cultural Heritage”. It is poignant that in a previous issue of this Quarterly (supra, 1 and 26) a paper by Geoffrey on “Salvage and the Role of the Insurer” is immediately preceded by a comment on the most recent decision in the US on the ongoing salvage operations on the Titanic (R.M.S. Titanic Inc., successor in interest to Titanic Ventures v. Christopher S. Haver; Deep Ocean Expeditions (1999) 171 F. 3d 943 (U.S.C.A. 4th Cir.))

The new edition will continue to be a vital part of the practitioner’s library. But it is ironic that the last paragraph heralds the most dramatic variation yet in the terms of Lloyd’s Form, work on which Geoffrey was engaged at the time of his death. Indeed, the “SCOPIC” agreement has to be regarded his brainchild and, taken with the simplified Standard Form which

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