Eric Preston

Like many young men of my generation I had little idea of what I wanted to do after I left school. So, when my older sister, who worked for a freight forwarder in Liverpool, told me there was a vacancy in one of the big liner agency companies I thought “why not?” Thus started a long career with Bahr Behrend & Co.

After a couple of years working in the forwarding department I was transferred to the freight department, where I enjoyed many happy years. At first, I joined the Inward Freight section where I was involved in, among other things, the intricacies of releasing cargo against the payment of freight and correctly endorsed bills of lading. I was also responsible for handling cargo claims on behalf of our shipowner principals. This, of course, meant explaining to the claimant that after the careful way in which our principals had handled his goods, they were surely in better condition now than when they left the country of origin.

My next position was assisting the freight department manager, with particular responsibility for the ships’ operations section. I replaced a man named Bill Gard who was emigrating to Montreal. While explaining my new job to me Mr Gard told me a lot about the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers of which, for some years, he had been a Fellow. This kindled a spark of interest and it was then that my mentor appeared in the form of my Director Len Goodman. Mr Goodman was also a Fellow of the Institute and he asked me “why don’t you have a crack at the exams?” Bahr Behrend generously paid for all of my study fees and books and, as I was spending most of my lunch breaks in the Liverpool Reference Library, allowing extended lunch hours. This opened up a whole new vista for me. I was fascinated reading Chorley & Gile’s Shipping Law, Casebook on Carriage of Goods by Sea, Scrutton on Charter Parties and Thomas on Stowage and others.

I also learned for the first time about the “snail in the ginger beer bottle” and other such fascinating legal cases. Bahr Behrend was handling some 20-30 ships a week in the River Mersey at that time and my partner and I had to be available 24-hours a day. We took it in turns to be “on call”. And so despite working long hours and regularly being disturbed by telephone calls during the night, I was surprised when I received that welcome letter from The Institute telling me that I’d passed and was eligible for election as an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers; a proud moment indeed.

Several years later, Mr Goodman called me into his office. There he explained that in a couple of years time the shipbroking manager would be retiring and a Fellow of the Institute would be needed to replace him. So once again I started studying. In those days, we didn’t have the benefit of the excellent Tutorship distance learning course and had to rely on correspondence courses written by Pitmans and the School of Accountancy. There were times when I thought, “I know more about this than the person who wrote the course”.

Fortunately, I had always been an avid reader of shipping publications and, at this time, I would read Lloyd’s List, the Journal of Commerce, Fairplay and Lloyds Law Reports as soon as they arrived in the office. I’m sure this must have helped me in my endeavours because I passed the Fellowship examinations with flying colours. I now had the letters FICS after my name and proudly called myself a Chartered Shipbroker, something I have done ever since.

Having gained my Fellowship, Mr Goodman suggested that I put my name forward for election to the Liverpool Branch Committee. In those days there would often be more applicants than vacancies and elections were a regular feature. So I joined the Branch Committee and eventually became Branch Chairman. This, in turn, led to me becoming a Controlling Council representative, a member and eventually Chairman of the Finance Committee and a member of the Institute Vetting Committee.

In the late 1980s, the Bahr Behrend freight director decided to take early retirement and, I was nominated as his replacement. Thus, having started as a 16-year-old junior clerk I had reached the dizzy heights of directorship.

Before the Baltic Exchange was destroyed by a terrorist bomb the Institute held its Controlling Council meetings in the Queen’s Room of the Exchange and these two-day affairs always ended with a rather splendid lunch, finishing with a decanter of port being passed around. It was at the end of the March 1991 meeting, having enjoyed pre-lunch drinks, several glasses of wine with the meal and a couple of glasses of excellent port, that I was approached by the then Chairman, David Bee, suggesting that I should become the next Vice Chairman of the Institute. I’m convinced, to this day, that he waited until my defences were down before asking me that fateful question. I discussed the proposal with my colleagues on the board of Bahr Behrend and it was agreed that I should put my name forward to the Controlling Council as a candidate for nomination as the next Chairman. The proposal was accepted and in 1991 I became Vice Chairman, leading up to my election as Chairman at the October 1993 meeting of the Controlling Council.

Our Institute was, at that time, in something of a state of flux. We had been bombed out of our office accommodation in the Baltic Exchange Chambers and, after experiencing some ill health, the long-standing Secretary of the Institute decided to take early retirement. This meant the role of Chairman was a very busy one and I went through a very steep learning curve. Barbara Fletcher agreed to combine her existing role of Director of Education with that of Secretary of the Institute, a dual role that worked very well right up to her retirement. We also negotiated an extremely good package on our new accommodation at St Helen’s Place.

During this time, President Hugh McCoy, who visited South Africa regularly on business, told me that he had had a conversation with a couple of members of the Institute of South African Shipbrokers and he felt the time was right for us to see if we could entice them back into our Institute.

I flew to Durban and, with a number of senior members of the South African Institute, discussed the possibility of them returning to the fold. This would, of course, mean dissolving the South African Institute, which had been in existence since 1965 and, understandably, they were not sure how this proposal would be greeted by their membership. At the same time they had their own Bye Laws which included several practices which might not be acceptable to us. I am pleased to say that the package that I put together was acceptable to both parties and the rest, as they say is history. In South Africa we now have one of our strongest and most active branches and during my three visits to that country I have met many wonderful people and made a number of good friends.

When I completed my term of office as Chairman in 1995 I thought I had escaped, but the Director, Barbara Fletcher, had other ideas. A replacement was required as Liner Trades examiner in the qualifying examinations and so I took on another role. This led to me going to PREP, the Institute revision weekend held at Warwick University where, for a number of years, I tutored students who were sitting the Liner Trades examination. This was a brand new experience for me and resulted in me making yet another group of friends among the lecturers and tutors. The liner industry has changed almost beyond recognition since I first started in 1949 and so with the introduction of the new syllabus I decided that I was too out of touch to continue examining and tutoring and have now hung up my boots! However I am still on the Liverpool Branch Committee where I act as Honorary Treasurer, so I continue to keep in touch.

So from junior clerk to Board Director and from AICS to Chairman of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers, and everything in between, I can see that most of it resulted from my mentor, Mr Goodman, encouraging me to become a member of this wonderful organisation we call our Institute.

The next issue of Shipping Network will feature the profound effect ICS membership has had on one of the Institute’s more recently qualified members.

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