Eric was born and raised beside the sea in Norfolk, England and joined the Royal Navy straight from school in 1976. He served as a deck officer in a variety of ships from Minesweeper to Aircraft Carrier and left as a Lieutenant in 1990. After a few years as a police officer in Scotland, Eric returned to sea with the Merchant Navy and spent most of this time as a deck officer on product tankers up to 40,000 tons, including time served with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary in the Persian Gulf (twice) and Sierra Leone.

By now having a young family, Eric came ashore in 2001 and worked for over seventeen years in various marine consultancy and marine management positions in the oil and gas industry, based in Aberdeen. This period including roles planning mobile drilling rig moves, operations manager for a leading supplier of marine mooring equipment and marine manager for a large international marine logistics provider, which included managing and inspecting chartered offshore support vessels for major oil companies. Eric moved to the South of France in late 2018 to work as a vessel manager for a provider of ISM, ISPS and MLC management to the yachting industry. He is married to Irina and they have three grown children.

Eric joined Hill Robinson as Compliance Manager in Antibes in March 2020.