Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World's Most Secretive Industry

by Matthew Campbell

Much of the trade they exploited was in oil. As cars became mass-market conveniences in Europe and North America, crude went from the periphery of the shipping business to its very center. In an earlier era, ships collected their cargoes in industrial cities—Liverpool, Philadelphia, Montreal. In the new automobile age, the most important loading ports would include places like Mina Al Ahmadi, in Kuwait, and Ras Tanura, on the edge of Saudi Arabia’s seemingly limitless oil fields. Sixty percent of the growth in maritime trade between 1948 and 1973 was in “liquid cargo,” overwhelmingly petroleum and products related to it. Moving larger quantities of oil over longer distances required a huge increase in tanker capacity, which a pair of Greek operators were particularly eager to provide. Stavros Niarchos and Aristotle Onassis, the most prominent shipping tycoons of the postwar era, arguably deserve more credit than anyone for the development of the supertanker, which transformed the energy business after its introduction in the 1950s. Contemporaries and bitter rivals, Niarchos and Onassis competed to build the fanciest yachts and to wed the most beautiful women (one of whom, the maritime heiress Tina Livanos, they both ultimately married). They vied to dominate the tanker trade, commissioning larger and larger ships that would dramatically cut the cost of carrying each barrel between continents.