Hal reports on tankers and gas carriers, having joined Lloyd’s List in 2010 when tankers were in the doldrums and gas carriers were starting to catch fire (the market, not the vessels). Fast forward five years and tankers were the big earners, while LNG carriers were struggling with pitiful earnings.

Such slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are compelling enough to keep Hal peering round the corner to the next tectonic shift in an exhilarating industry that evidently favours the gambler’s risk-taking mentality. It’s a far cry from a previous incarnation as a civil servant at the Home Office, the Department of Trade & Industry, and the Foreign Office, where staid conventionality was perhaps more the order of the day.