A load of old cod

A load of old cod

FIGHTING a cod war is not glamorous. But my first live action on a warship involved lashing old railway lines across the deck of a frigate, then putting the ship between Icelandic gunboats and Hull trawlers, as Britain tried to assert a self-given right to hoover up Iceland's cod stocks. We won the skirmish, but lost the war and, in the end, it is the cod themselves who lost everything.

Leaving aside government press releases, it is now almost impossible to find a load of old cod anywhere. What pass for cod in most restaurants are small, feeble young fish. Whole economies have been built on cod, and have in turn foundered on the inability of cod to breed fast enough to stay ahead of the voracious appetites of factory trawlers.

You can still satisfy a voracious appetite for bacalao - salt cod - if you take a trip to the Basque country. The Basques knew, and still know, more about cod than anyone. A dish of bacalao al pil pil - whole slices of salt cod shaken in just the right way to get the juices to run and emulsify - is something worth going to war for.

If you have any appetite at all for a good story well told, and some history that will shake your perceptions at the same time, then Cod is the book for you. Mark Kurlansky has mixed the fishy with the unlikely, added some history, seasoned his text with personalties and come up with a book that has you hooked from the first page.
Cod. Kurlansky, Mark. Published by Jonathan Cape. Price £12.99 (UK)

JG

Bienvenue

SHIPPING is seriously short of well-written research which takes a wide view of the politics and law governing safety at sea. So welcome a major tome from Philippe Boisson, communications director of Bureau Veritas. Politiques et Droit de la Securite Maritime covers the broad sweep of shipping regulation, examining in great detail the different elements of the safety system which governs - or perhaps fails to govern - world shipping.

Boisson analyses the actions and motives of states and international bodies active in shipping legislation, shining a light into some dark corners. A useful comparison with regulation in other transport sectors opens new perspectives for shipping regulators. Available only in French at the moment, but due out in English early in 1999.

Published by Bureau Veritas, 17 bis Place de Reflets, La Defense 2, 92400 Courbevois, France. Tel: +33 1 42 91 53 66 Fax: +33 1 42 91 54 47. Price FF490 plus p&p. JG

The juryman's tale

JURIES don't often figure in the thinking of parties to shipping disputes. Yet they do have a role to play in some parts of the world. In our In the Dock section in this issue you can read about a marine insurance dispute in the US courts where the reasons advanced for settling out of court in the first instance included a prediction that jurors were often unfavourable to insurers and indeed biased against them. Try not to smile.

The Juryman's Tale is not a book about a shipping dispute. But it is a first-hand account of the trial dealing with the 1996 kidnapping of Greek shipping magnate George Fraghistas for a $3m ransom. The story of the kidnapping itself, of George's wretched imprisonment in a broom cupboard in Maida Vale, and of the trial at the Old Bailey, makes engrossing reading. Was George really kidnapped, or did he arrange the whole thing himself as a way of paying off his massive gambling debts?

But the real beauty of the book is the insight it provides into the role of the jury in the English criminal justice system. Author Trevor Grove is a former editor of The Sunday Telegraph, and one of twelve people selected to form the jury in R v Korkolis in 1997. His book is a masterpiece, an absolutely engrossing read that takes you into the jury room and answers a lot of the questions that those of us who have never sat on a jury would like to know the answers to. For those of us about to sit on a jury, meanwhile, it is a tantalising foretaste of what lies in store.

The jury in R v Korkolis has to deal with everything from the learned arguments of urbane barristers to the ramblings of the accused, Korkolis, conducting his own defence and arguing, ÒSo the losses going on till now OK? I told him. When in this now also. I accepted. I told him. No I go later. I told him. No he told me. He organise he had a debt. He elaborated. Then if now we wouldn't do it as kidnapping as connected with debt."

The judge deserves a medal for making sense of testimony like this, and the jury deserves even more for sitting through sixty-four days of the trial and emerging with a verdict.

Despite the glamorous nature of the crime which it deals with, it is the telling of the day-to-day activities of the jury which really is the heart of this marvellous book. Most people get to dine out on their jury experiences, or just bore all their friends with the anecdotes. Trevor Grove has done us all a favour by writing a book about his experiences.

My verdict is buy it. Absolutely unanimous
The Juryman's Tale. Grove, Trevor. Published by Bloomsbury Publishing plc. Price (in UK) £11.99. CH

Down in the dumps

THE dumping of garbage into the sea can be as dangerous as pollution caused by oil spills, although it attracts far less publicity. It also assumes a low priority in many companies, but that could be about to change.

From July 1, 1998, all ships have to carry a garbage management plan, as required under Marpol.

It is anticipated that ships' garbage management plans will be examined by both flag state and port state control and will be regarded as an integral part of ships' Safety Management Systems as required by the ISM Code.

With all the publicity which the ISM Code has attracted, this topic may have been overlooked. Enter the International Chamber of Shipping, which has published an informative guide entitled Guidelines for the preparation of Garbage Management Plans. This incorporates a model plan to facilitate the development of ship-specific plans and to take account of all relevant IMO regulations and recommendations.

Rubbish.

Copies can be obtained from Marisec Publications in London. Tel: +44 171 417 8844. Fax: +44 171 417 8877. Price: £25.00 CH

Right idea, wrong writing

GRANTA has the right idea. The sea is ever more remote from the lives of most people. Our dependency on the oceans hasn't lessened, but people just see less of the things which they identify with the sea. Ships don't berth in city centres any more, sailors are few and far between. So we have to encourage new writing about the sea, to keep it alive in our minds.

The sea is a different thing to each person. For most landlubbers, it is not the sea itself they actually think about, but the interface between land and sea, the shoreline, the fishing boats, the smell of mud flats, the romance of sea travel. Only seamen can know what a North Atlantic winter storm is really like, and only seamen can tell of the utter stillness of an Indian Ocean calm. But however many faces the sea has, it is never pretentious. That is left to writers, some of whom have made it into Granta's collection.

This is an eclectic mixture of stories, history and photographs. Human in scale, evocative in parts, nonsense in others, offensive partially and larded through with that unfortunate streak of pseudo-romance that the sea brings out in people who know nothing of it. But buy it. Anything that keeps the sea in our minds deserves support.