- Member of the Lloyd’s panel of Special Casualty Representatives (SCR)
- Assistant to the Board of The Hull Trinity House
- Associate Fellow of the Nautical Institute
- Freeman of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners
John is the co-founder and director of Solis Marine, also a master mariner having substantial experience in command and as a first class pilot in the UK. He has acted as a nautical assessor to the High Court of Hong Kong and given expert evidence in London Arbitrations and Court in Hong Kong, Canada, Indonesia and Israel, during criminal and civil cases. He has provided expert reports on collisions, groundings, unsafe ports and berths, use of tugs and manoeuvring issues, seaworthiness, cargo loss, shift and stowage, performance claims due to bad weather, personal injury and death, pollution incidents and fouling of submarine pipelines and cables.
As well as acting as SCR he has also attended a number of high profile and politically sensitive salvage and wreck removals in Europe, Canada, South America, China, Philippines and Indonesia. During these operations he has been heavily involved from the initial preparation of the tenders through the oil, pollutants and cargo removal and storage to attendance during the clearance of the wreck site.
John was also a consultant mariner, based in London, for a leading firm of international marine consultants which included establishing and running the Hong Kong office as director where he built up a busy base. After returning to London he resumed his former role becoming a director.
As a pilot on the River Humber in the UK, John has manoeuvred and anchored all types of vessels, including cape size and panamax bulk carriers and tankers through narrow channels to terminals in a river having a large tidal range and strong currents. Passage planning included the calculation of minimum depths for transit and under keel clearance, tug type and allocation followed by conducting vessels in and out of river berths and enclosed docks in all states of weather and tide. He has also undertaken pilotage of vessels over 300,000 tonnes deadweight to FPSOs and SPMs. Command experience includes ocean towage and salvage in West Africa and extensive towage and anchor handling in all sectors of the North Sea, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and West Africa. Tows included disabled vessels, semi-submersible and jack-up rigs and all types of barges for the offshore sector. These operations involved carrying out own pilotage in many modern and undeveloped ports in the regions of operation.
John was also a contracts manager for a dredging operator undertaking pre and post dredge surveys, during maintenance dredging projects in ports around the UK. This followed experience as a watch keeping officer trading worldwide on refrigerated cargo, general cargo carrying break bulk, container and bulk cargoes.
