BY THE RT. HON. LORD CLARKE OF STONE-CUM-EBONY

It is eighteen years since I wrote the foreword to the first edition of this work. It was then a slim volume which successfully brought together in a thoroughly researched and well structured way the various aspects of English maritime law as it affected the towage industry, engaged both in sophisticated ocean towage, often allied to some form of offshore oil and gas or heavylift operation, and in the more humble context of port and harbour towage. The book was the first to bring together the general law on the subject and to address the special questions which affect towage and offshore operations such as general average, collision and limitation. The book was also the first to give a clause-by-clause analysis and commentary of the (then relatively few) standard form contracts in the field: the UK Standard Conditions for port and harbour work on which I was frequently engaged in practice at the Bar and the later BIMCO Towcon, Towhire and Supplytime forms which I encountered principally as judge. The book rapidly and deservedly became an authority in its field.

Since then, over its second and now its third edition, Simon Rainey s The Law of Tug and Tow has grown in size and has come to encompass the wide variety of new and revised standard forms of contract which the offshore industry, under the auspices of BIMCO, has adopted in response to the changing needs of and the specialised operations involved in support services for the exploration and drilling industry, in towage and in the marine transportation of heavy and voluminous cargoes. I am glad to be able to say that the size and increased coverage of this latest edition has not been at the expense of its learning, lightly worn, its logical and analytical clarity, its readability and its tackling, with obvious deep practical experience, of the tricky problems which the standard forms of contract seem, particularly, to throw up, with the whole work being enhanced by many practical suggestions which will greatly benefit those whose business it is to draft these offshore industry contracts.

At first sight, it seemed strange to me in reading this third edition to see that my decision as Admiralty Judge in The Herdentor , decided as long ago as 19 January 1996, still looms large in the commentary and in the subsequent case law considering the mutual allocation of risk (or, as BIMCO refers to them, the knock-for-knock) provisions which lie at the heart of many of the BIMCO forms considered in this book.

I can think of no surer guide through the complex issues presented by the problems encountered by the offshore marine industry both in the application of the general law and in the standard form contracts which it uses than Simon Rainey in this third edition of his work. It is a testament to the value and authority of the book that it remains today the unrivalled and leading treatment of the law relating to offshore contracts and offshore industry operations.