Doyen of maritime law retires

May 5, 2003
Author: P&S

One of South Africa’s leading maritime attorneys, Roger Gifford, former chairman and senior partner at Shepstone & Wylie and former president of the Maritime Law Association, retired recently after a legal career stretching back as far as 1951.

Mr Gifford spent the last 30 of those years specialising in maritime law, during which he included time with a prominent firm of maritime solicitors in London, Ince & Co. He had frequent trips to P&I Clubs, solicitors and clients in the UK, Scandinavia, Greece and other European countries and also visits to the Far East, during which time he continued to hone his skills in maritime law.

Cases in which he became involved saw him travel to the United States, to London, Paris, Hamburg, Geneva, Piraeus, Haifa, Hong Kong and Singapore. He also attended a colloquium on the Hamburg Rules in Vienna during the 1970s, in the company of all the top brains in the shipping world.

Mr Gifford was a member of the inaugural Executive Committee of the South African Maritime Law Association when it was formed in the early 1970s, and was later to become the Association’s president for six years, preceding Douglas Shaw QC and John Hare, professor of shipping law at the university of Cape Town, who is also a partner of Shepstone & Wylie.

Between 1990 and 1997 he was chairman and senior partner at Shepstone & Wylie and senior partner from 1997 until his recent retirement.

“I’m delighted that I did shipping law, because of its wide diversity and totally international character, which made for a wonderful mix,” he says.

Mr Gifford still found time to serve on the board at St Mary’s Diocesan School for Girls at Kloof for a period of 20 years and was on the Council of the Durban Community Chest as well as being a member of the Durban Rotary Club.

Married to Sally from 1957 the couple have four daughters, 12 grandchildren and two step-grandchildren. But despite his ‘retirement’ he remains active with the firm and still goes into the Shepstone & Wylie offices at least once a week.