QUESTION 5 What are the biggest challenges facing modern day marine surveyors, particularly those who did not come into the business the way you did as an apprentice in a shipyard?


The biggest challenge is getting the necessary breadth of experience. Many of them only have experience of say frp yachts with no experience of wood, steel or ferro-cement construction. A good surveyor should be able to survey a vessel whatever her material of construction, give a reasonably good idea of the condition of her rig and a similar superficial report on the condition of her machinery. It would help, in my opinion, if everyone who took the Diploma course in marine surveying, had to attend a minimum number of training days before setting out on his or her own. Ideally, he/she would also have spent some time with and understudying an experienced surveyor.


I


realise that raises problems and would be difficult to enforce and/or practice, but it is the only and very best way to gain knowledge and to understand the necessary experience. Another challenge is to gain the ability to write a good quality and accurate report in good English. Often, it is simply badly written English that gets a surveyor into trouble with his clients.


QUESTION 6 Which two aspects of your work as a marine surveyor are you most proud of and gave you the most pleasure?


The first I would say is that I was responsible for building the last two ships (large rubbish barges actually) to be launched into the London river in the old Hog Yard at Limehouse Hole.


It is underneath


a concrete roundabout now. Sic transit Gloria mundi!


The second was the receipt of the Lifetime Achievement Award presented to me at the IIMS Conference dinner aboard HMS Belfast as a length of time in the business momento. I was very deeply moved by that. The men I served my time with at the Orchard Dock would have been proud of me.


Isle of Dogs and the West India Docks. I built the last two vessels to be built on the London river at Limehouse hole - bottom right where the two big sheds can be seen. We used to call it the Hog yard. Blackwall Basin is the circular dock off to the left.


Me receiving my Lifetime Achievement Award to celebrate 70


years in the surveying and maritime world at the 2015 IIMS Conference dinner aboard HMS Belfast, London. Together with Capt Bertrand


Apperry (IIMS President at the time) and Mike Schwarz (centre).


The Report • September 2020 • Issue 93 | 107


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