MARITIME LAW (2nd Edition) by Christopher Hill, M.A., F.I.C.S. Lloyd’s of London Press Ltd., London (1985, xxxi and 376 pp., plus 6 pp. Index). Hardback £16.50.

The second edition of Christopher Hill’s Maritime Law is largely an updating of the first, intended to take account of developments in the law since 1981. Its general aim clearly remains unchanged: to provide a general overview of maritime law (less carriage of goods by sea and marine insurance, which are compendiously covered elsewhere) for students, practitioners, shipping executives and others involved in the shipping industry. Thirteen chapters accordingly cover the field quite fully, dealing in turn with ownership and registration, mortgages, shipbuilding and ship sale contracts, jurisdiction, collisions, salvage, towage, limitation of liability, oil pollution, seafarers and ships’ masters, passengers and docks and harbours. Useful interleavings include prescribed form mortgages and bills of sale; a copy of the 1983 revision of the U.K. Standard Conditions for towage; and reproductions of the standard Lloyd’s No Cure—No Pay salvage form and the Norwegian Saleform 1983 form of ship sale contract. In style, Mr Hill deliberately concentrates on the original sources of maritime law. His tendency is thus to quote facts and results in individual decisions in full wherever possible; similarly with international conventions, where these are relevant—as with liability for oil pollution.

All of which, on principle, goes to make up a valuable introduction to an important subject; and indeed, in respect of certain areas of the law this is precisely what Mr Hill provides. The coverage of salvage, for instance, is informative and useful; similarly with pilotage and oil pollution liability. It is when one goes beyond this, however, that some misgivings arise over the overall value of the book, owing to the fact that it contains a number of rather serious faults. Indeed, it is arguable that these faults fatally mar the work as an effective student (or other) text.

First, in places the description of the general law seems to me to be ill-digested and not sufficiently tied to the specific subject of maritime law. The general coverage of misrepresentation in Chapter 3, for example, seems to fall into this category. Similarly, the discussion of sellers’ and buyers’ remedies on pp. 62–63; the seller’s remedy of stoppage in transit, which is listed, is hardly likely to be very relevant to contracts for the sale of ships, while one of the most important buyer’s remedies in this context—rejection of a non-conforming vessel—is not even mentioned in this context. Yet again, whatever their importance (or lack of it) in the general law of contract, some mention might be expected in connection with shipbuilding contracts of the two Hyundai cases (Hyundai v. Papadopoulos [1980] 1 W.L.R. 1129 and Hyundai v. Pournaras [1978] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 502). There is none.

There is, secondly, in many places an air of lack of planning, of things where they ought not to be—almost of confusion. Why, for instance, does a chapter ostensibly on “jurisdiction” include discussion on shiprepairers’ possessory liens (p. 115) and on priorities between different maritime lien holders (p. 122)? What is the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945 doing in a section headed (p. 161) “The concept of contribution between joint tortfeasors”? And, in a book ostensibly eschewing carriage of goods by sea, it is a little odd to find substantial discussion of the limitation of carriers’ liability. (It is, incidentally, even odder to find no mention at all of Art. IV.2(b) of the Hague Rules in this connection.)

Thirdly, much matter that is included is of doubtful relevance, such as the above-mentioned seller’s right to stop in transit. Why, for another instance, the disembodied reference on p. 118 to s. 21(5) of the Supreme Court Act 1981, which deals with actions in rem against aircraft for towage or pilotage claims? Why such extended coverage (p. 127 ff) of the law on sovereign immunity prior to the State Immunity Act 1978? Again, in a short book it seems a little odd in the chapter on oil pollution to discuss s. 1 of the Prevention of Oil Pollution Act 1971 on p. 303, before going on to say on p. 305 that it has been repealed anyway. And lastly, whatever academic or historical interest the old doctrine of common employment may have, it is quite beyond me why there should be a paragraph on it in a chapter on Pilotage (p. 347).