For many years this classic and influential, though idiosyncratic, book has been an indispensable aid to every student of shipping law whose horizons extend beyond the latest decision of the Court of Appeal or House of Lords. The second edition, published in 1978, gained widespread acceptance as a book which was useful, not so much to find out what was the law on a particular subject (because here it could be notoriously erratic) but rather to discover what in a civilized and idealized world it ought to be.

In all editions of the book, Professor Tetley has brought to bear to his subject an unusual combination of talents. First, he was for many years a legal practitioner with an extensive practice in the field of cargo claims. The practical experience so gained sharpened his talent for seizing on the essentials in any legal situation, simplifying the issues and communicating his conclusions in clear and helpful terms. It also, I think, imbued him with a gift for advocacy, a talent which his work often displays, in particular of course when he is discussing subjects against which he has long crusaded, such as the enforcement of “demise” or “Himalaya” clauses. Second, he has, most unusually for authors on maritime subjects, had a career in politics and as a legislator. This brought him into contact with the process of drafting and enacting legislation and left him with a respect for precise legislation coupled with a distrust of the use of so called “travaux préparatoires” in construing statutes. Finally, as a law professor at McGill University for the last 12 years, he has brought to this work the breadth of vision of an academic and a talent for collating the decisions of courts in a wide variety of different jurisdictions in North America, the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and the Continent of Europe.

The third edition of the book, published in 1988, is both a revision of the 1978 edition and also a development of it. For Professor Tetley the citation of all the relevant case law on any topic, both from all common law and all civil law jurisdictions, is not only a valuable activity in itself; it is also a necessary prelude to the comparative method he has chosen to adopt. In the interval between the two editions, a period during which there has been a vast increase in the number of reported decisions, the research conducted by the author has more than kept pace with the growth in the underlying material. The result is that the work has grown in size by a factor of about three and is now a weighty tome of some 1,100 pages of text and a further 160 pages of appendices. Mere size, by itself, is not of course necessarily a merit. In this case, however, Professor Tetley has successfully preserved the sharp outlines of the earlier treatment of the subject while supporting the discussion with a wealth of comparative material which is both valuable in itself and also generally helpful in deepening the discussion.

A less satisfactory feature of the present edition, however, is that it sometimes fails to match the citation of case law to an appropriate discussion of the relevant concepts. This has arisen, I think, because the original aim of the author, at least in earlier editions, was to present a simplified plain lawyer’s guide to the bringing and defending of cargo actions. The introduction of so much comparative material into the third edition has left an impression at times of a less than certain touch as to the audience at which it is aimed and a disproportion between the depth of research that has gone into the citation of authority, as compared with the simplicity of some of the discussion. In Chapter 6, for example, entitled “the burden and order of proof”, Professor Tetley sets out in summary form “what the Claimant must prove” and “what the Carrier must prove”. This summary is then discussed in greater detail. But, despite references to cases such as Albacora S.R.L. v. Westcott & Laurance Line [1966] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 53, the author fails to consider in any real depth what is certainly the most