The experience of Grace Line offered a graphic warning. Grace had won a $7 million government subsidy to convert two vessels into containerships and spent another $3 million on chassis, forklifts, and 1,500 aluminum containers, only to have longshoremen in Venezuela refuse to handle its highly publicized ships. Having badly misjudged the politics and the economics of container shipping, it would eventually sell the ships to Sea-Land at a loss. As a Grace executive noted ruefully, “The concept was valid, but the timing was wrong.”
