Richard Shaw 1940 - 2013

Richard Shaw at Southampton University

My old friend Richard Shaw died peacefully on 16th October 2013, having suffered from a brain tumour since March.  A warm and kindly man,  he was one of the City's finest maritime lawyers and a specialist in Admiralty cases. He was a scholar at Bancrofts and read law at Oxford before signing on as an AB on a cargo ship for a voyage to Australia.  After a stint of teaching in Adelaide, he began his City career with Richards Butler and became a well-known admiralty specialist at Elborne Mitchell before leaving in 1979 to start his own firm, Shaw and Croft, with Roger Croft in 1980. His first case was one of the world's largest collisions - the VLCCs Atlantic Empress and Aegean Captain which collided fully laden  in a tropical rainstorm off Tobago, leading to a spillage of oil that is still listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest from ships. Later he was involved with the Piper Alpha oil rig explosion, the Aegean Sea oil spill, the Tricolor collision and sinking and in advising underwriters and the police in tracing the proceeds of the Brinks Mat robbery.

Richard retired from Shaw and Croft in 1995 and went on to teach maritime law at the Southampton Institute of Maritime Law, specialising in marine insurance and salvage (he was the editor of Kennedy on Salvage). He was also active in the British Maritime Law Association and the Comite Internationale Maritime, where he was elected Member Honoris Causa in 2012.

Richard loved sailing, keeping a boat at Lymington near his country home and hill walking, in the company of his fellow lawyers Stuart Beare and Patrick Griggs. Richard leaves his wife Avril, who supported him throughout his long career and looked after him wonderfully during his illness, two sons and a daughter. 

Favourite Gardens - Knoll Gardens

Following a new enthusiasm for garden grasses, inspired by the beautiful garden created by Gillian Pugh at The Buildings, Broughton, I have determined to create a small area for them at Stockbridge as part of the landscaping now being undertaken by Brian Dibley. One of the best collections of grasses to see displayed and also for stock is Neil Lucas's Knoll Gardens, near Wimborne. Click here for some more photos. 

Harvest Festival

                  Parishioners arrive for Harvest Festival in Litchfield on a fine early autumn day 

Ibrahim El-Salahi at the Tate Modern

A fine exhibition of Ibrahim El-Salahi's work at the Tate Modern. Click here for some more photos

Favourite Gardens - The Buildings, Broughton

A lovely garden on the downs overlooking Broughton, where the owners have used grasses to beautiful effect. For more photos, click here

The Curious Case of the Middle Lane

Does anyone else think that the recent increased penalisation of drivers driving in the middle lane of a motorway is very odd - and even, from the point of view of safety, perverse?

Motorways are the safest of our roads with only 5% of accidents occurring on them*, and it's difficult to believe that driving in the middle lane makes them less safe.

Furthermore, moving regularly into the inner lane (when there are three or four lanes) creates a number of potentially dangerous scenarios. The majority of the risk in motorway driving is in changing lanes or failing to spot the slowing of traffic ahead of you.

Assuming you drive at about the official speed limit of 70mph* you are usually travelling close to the speed of others using the middle lane and can stay there safely for long distances. Those going faster use the outside overtaking lane before eventually moving back into the middle lane. Those going more slowly - often lorries - use the inner lane which has an average speed of about 50-60mph.

If you move into the inner lane, you will very soon encounter the slower-moving traffic and have to slow down or move out again to overtake. Quite often you can't move back to the middle lane due to the flow of cars and have to wait for a sometimes inadequate gap to open up, causing frustration and lead to a possibly risky manoeuvre.

Moving to the inner lane continuously after overtaking in the middle lane leads to a more stressful and risky journey as each change of lane contains dangerous moments and requires careful study of the mirrors to ensure that a car or motorcycle isn't closing quickly on the gap you have selected. Looking often in your mirrors mean that you are more likely for a critical second or two to miss the fact that the cars in front of you have suddenly slowed.

I prefer to remain as safe as possible on motorways and use the middle lane unless there is very little traffic. Why should this attract a penalty?

It is even more odd when the manoeuvre that I find most alarming - undertaking (which when I was taught to drive, was treated as 'dangerous') - is no longer sanctioned.

*At a Speed Awareness Course I attended, the instructors quoted the 5% figure for the safely of motorways and also said that the 'usual' speed of cars in the outside lane was 82mph - which they thought perfectly safe, hence the continuing discussion about raising the speed limit to 80mph. 

Favourite Places - Plymouth

View from Plymouth Hoe 

Some time ago I put up a photo of the view from Plymouth Hoe of Drake's Island and Mt Edgecumbe on Christmas Day. I spent some time there again this week and found many more beautiful views and places full of fascinating history. It's a city that deserves to be better known. For more photos, click here