Viking Raid

by Matthew McCleery

  Spyrolaki had given him a well-worn paperback copy of the magnificent book written by Nicos Kazantzakis in 1946 as a “closing present” and it hadn’t taken long for Robert to understand why. The Olympic Airlines flight back to New York had barely crossed the Ionian Sea before Robert recognized his similarity to the protagonist, Basel. He read the novel non-stop during the eleven-hour flight back to New York, hoping for a happy ending that would mirror his own fate.

  The book tells the story of a naïve and restless intellectual who takes a break from his schooling in England to move to Crete and learn about the grit of the “real world” by attempting to restart his father’s abandoned lignite mine. When a storm prevents him from boarding a ferry in Piraeus, Basel goes to a café on the Akti Miaouli where he meets Alexis Zorba, the bon vivant who ends up changing Basel’s view of life; he teaches Basel about the importance of being free and bringing passion to whatever he does. In the closing moments, as Basel and Zorba confront their failure to restart the mine, Zorba teaches Basel to dance the sirtaki and they laugh and sing.

  Robert was suddenly alert when he spotted the number “93” etched above the doorway of a modest, 1970s-vintage glass-front building on the Akti Miaouli. Still wearing his outfit from the roadshow because he didn’t have anything else to change into, he tightened his necktie, patted down his hair and entered the lobby.

  “Kalispera,” said the attendant who was smoking a cigarette and watching television on a small black and white monitor.

  As Robert approached the desk, his attention was immediately drawn to a wall covered by a mosaic of rectangular brass placards each engraved with the name of a different company; there must have been a hundred of them. As his eyes moved across the wall, he was struck by the names appearing on the plaques: Kardamyla Chartering, Chios Shipping, Aegean Carriers, Mastic Management, Bat Man Navigation and Barbie Shipbrokers. Although Robert didn’t notice it, the spot where the Delos Express placard had resided for twenty years was now occupied by the shiniest, newest, plate of them all – Treasure Island Navigation.

  During the transformative eighteen months he had spent in the shipping business, Robert had learned it was customary for shipowners to set up a special purpose corporation (SPC) for almost everything they owned – or did. Motivated by a variety of factors from tax efficiency to insulating one ship from the liabilities of another to enhancing confidentiality, even a reasonably active career in shipowning could produce dozens of offshore companies in nearly as many jurisdictions – the names and locations of which even the shipowners could sometimes not recall as their memories began to flicker and grow dim with age.

  “Kalispera,” Robert replied to the male receptionist through the smoky haze. “I am here to see Spyrolaki Bouboulinas.”

  “Eight,” the man said in English before lighting a fresh cigarette from the glowing embers of another.

  When the gray sheet-metal doors opened onto the unoccupied reception area of Blue Sea Shipping & Trading, Robert felt as though he’d been transported into a museum of maritime ephemera. As he stepped out of the elevator on the spongy Oriental rug in the deserted foyer, he felt a warm sea breeze on his face.

  Directly in front of him was a highly detailed scale model of a ship called Blue Dream, its brass fittings shining and its deck thick with a forest of derrick cranes. Next to the model was a four-foot-high Chadsburn & Sons ship’s telegraph that had been removed from a vessel before she had been scrapped. As a person prone to nostalgia, Robert gravitated toward the mahogany paneled wall packed tight with black-and-white photographs.

  It didn’t take the American long to realize he was looking at a generation of family photos – and that every one of them involved a ship. He couldn’t help but smile at the first one he saw. Its corners yellow with age, the overexposed image showed a mostly toothless young Spyrolaki holding a soccer ball over his head and laughing as two jovial African men in white T-shirts hoisted the boy onto their shoulders.

  As he leaned in to study the photo more closely, Robert noticed a soccer goal in the background that had been fashioned from giant burlap sacks, one marked “Cocoa” and the other “Coffee.” While a seven-year-old Robert had been playing soccer with a bunch of boys on the Great Lawn in Central Park, Spyrolaki had been playing soccer in the hold of a cargo ship in Africa.

  In the next photo, Robert saw a smiling little girl waving from her father’s lap as he drove a now-antique, right-hand-drive Mercedes Benz over the stern ramp of a ship toward a primitive, desert seaport. Below that photograph was one of a beautiful and vaguely familiar-looking woman cutting the hair of two young children as they sat on stools on the poop deck of a cargo ship surrounded by a vast expanse of glittering sea.

  Another photo showed the same elegant woman, presumably Spyrolaki’s mother, holding a giant fish in her arms as she stood in a ship’s galley surrounded by a team of Filipino seafarers who were triumphantly gripping fishing rods. Next to that one was another photo depicting an improbably young-looking ship captain with mutton chop sideburns wearing an oversized white uniform and pointing to the words “Full Ahead” on a shiny telegraph – a device that looked exactly like the one Robert was leaning against.

  During the ten minutes Robert Fairchild spent inspecting the dozens of photographs in the foyer of Blue Sea Shipping & Trading, he had learned an irrefutable truth: Greeks weren’t in shipping – shipping was in Greeks. Now it was time to get down to business; it was time to find Spyrolaki and ask him to help Robert find the owner of the LNG ships.

  Chapter 19

  The Resilience of Greek Shipping

  In the beginning of the First World War, the Greeks had 475 steamers and 884 sailing ships of 1,001,116 gross tons. At the end of the War, they had just 205 vessels. After the Second World War, the Greek government gave certain guarantees, so that 100 Liberties and 7 T2 tankers could be given to Greek owners. This was the beginning of the latest re-vitalisation of the Greek merchant marine, and in the 30 or so years that followed, they reached the highest peak yet in their very long maritime history of over 54,000,000 gross tons in 1981, the largest fleet in the world.

  Mr. Spyros Polemis

  The History of Greek Shipping

  “I have excellent news, Dad!” Spyrolaki Bouboulinas proclaimed, his words causing the thirty human beings wheeling-and-dealing on the shipping company’s open trading floor to suddenly fall silent.

  “Save your breath, tiger,” his twin sister laughed. “Daddy’s still on the phone in the conference room with the Far East.”

  While Spyrolaki waited for his father to break free from another one of his endless conference calls, he mopped his forehead with his blue shirt and wandered over to the wall of glass that separated the Blue Sea Shipping & Trading chartering room from the busy harbor below. Pressing his hands up against the glass, he leaned forward and watched a pair of bunker barges fueling a cruise ship a few feet away from the towering white Minoan Lines ferry that was easing out of a berth to begin her weekly run into the forest of Aegean islands.

  “E’lla!” Captain Spyros Bouboulinas boomed a few seconds later as he dramatically pushed through the double doors of the conference room and entered the trading floor. He pulled off his telephone headset like a football player removing his helmet at halftime and tossed it onto the workstation that he shared with his son and daughter.

  “Is everything okay, Dad?” Spyrolaki asked his father.

  “Yes, yes, we are just working out some of the final details. There are always more details in this business,” the stout old man replied.

  “Thank you for supporting the project,” Spyrolaki said.

  “It is my pleasure,” the old man replied with a smile on his face and a flash of excitement in his copper eyes. “Now please tell me your news!”

  Like many fabulously successful first-generation Greek shipowners Captain Spyros Bouboulinas’s happiest moments were not the ones spent lounging at his apartment in Paris or hopping ar
ound the Aegean on his yacht or touring his half-million-acre sheep farm in New Zealand by Land Rover. What the old man loved most in life was the thing he was lucky enough to do almost every day – sitting in the midst of his chaotic international shipping company teaching his only two children the multi-generational Greek art of making money with cargo ships.

  The Captain, as he was known the world over, was so engaged in the day-to-day business of shipping that he had designed his office so that his own desk was sandwiched between the commercial department (which found cargo for his ships) and the technical department (which was responsible for ensuring that the cargo was loaded, carried and discharged safely and efficiently). Over the course of his long career, the Captain had learned that making money in shipping required an unusual combination of micromanagement alongside expansive thinking – and never, ever being out of the marketplace. That was why he liked having his ships in the spot market, because it put him in the middle of the information flow all the time.

  “Blue Horizon was just cleared to discharge in Buenos Aires,” Spyrolaki replied with pride. “That puts her three days ahead of schedule.”

  “Bravo!” The Captain smiled. “With China buying all of the soybeans the Argentines can grow, the South American farmers will be happy to have 27,000 tons of good Canadian potash to make more fertilizer,” his father said. “Without ships, half the world would starve.”

  “I think you mean 29,500 tons of good Canadian potash,” Spyrolaki corrected him and savored the look of pleasure blossoming on his father’s face.

  Growing up as the son of a sea captain-turned-shipowner, Spyrolaki knew how much his father appreciated the art and science of getting a little extra cargo safely onto an already loaded ship. “The base cargo is the meat and potatoes in this business,” his dad had been telling him since he was in third grade at Athens College, “but the extra stowage…is the gravy.”

  “Magnificent,” the Captain said with a variety of admiration usually reserved for artistic or athletic achievement.

  “Let’s hope the charterers thank us with some repeat business,” he said.

  “He’s going to need it,” Aphrodite laughed under her breath.

  “But how did you do it, son?” The old man asked eagerly. “How did you manage the extra stowage?”

  “We had a full moon and a very high tide in Vancouver which allowed us the extra draft we needed to load the bonus cargo,” Spyrolaki said. “We were lucky.”

  “Luck is what happens when you pay attention,” the Captain said. “But if you had such a full load, how did the ship make good speed?”

  “La Nina,” Spyrolaki said. “She gave us a following current all the way to Tierra del Fuego which allowed us to make an average of speed fourteen knots from pilot station to pilot station.”

  “Yes, fine,” the Captain laughed, “but then how much extra fuel did she burn?”

  “None,” his son replied. “We used an average of twenty-two metric tons per day.” There were 383 gallons to the metric ton which meant the Blue Horizon had burned 8,500 gallons of fuel at a cost of $16,000 each day – which was about the same as the charter rate for the ship.

  “In this business, every voyage presents its own set of unique circumstances,” the Captain said with a sense of wonder that had not diminished during his decades in the shipping business.

  “And who was the captain on that ship?” the old man asked.

  “Captain Gyftakis,” Spyrolaki said.

  “Harris or Nico?” the Captain asked.

  “Nico,” Spyrolaki said, “the older one.”

  “Ah, but they are twins, just like you two,” the Captain laughed as he looked down at his glamorous daughter as she carefully examined the Disbursement Account associated with a cargo of salt she had recently discharged in Peru.

  “They may be twins but Nico is two minutes older and we all know the older twin always runs a tighter ship,” Aphrodite said as she fluttered her mascara-caked eyelashes at her “baby” brother.

  “Yes, but the younger one takes more chances,” Spyrolaki said.

  “And makes more mistakes,” Aphrodite retaliated.

  “But tell me this, son,” the Captain asked as he examined the 10 x 15-foot map on the wall next to his private office. “How can the ship possibly be at the discharge port today when she hasn’t even cleared Tierra del Fuego?”

  “Oh, that,” Spyrolaki said sheepishly as he moved toward the map.

  “According to the position map she is still off the coast of Santiago which is another three days steaming to BA,” he said. The old man used the word “steaming” as many shipowners did; it was one of the many references to the old days when ships were still powered by coal-burning steam engines.

  Spyrolaki looked over at the pushpin-speckled map that was supposed to show the approximate location of his family’s dry cargo ships at any given moment. Each of the pushpins was festooned with a tiny paper flag that denoted the name of the particular vessel.

  There were more than a dozen solitary red flags showing the ships that were making long voyages across the oceans of the world – carrying grain from New Orleans to Rotterdam, briquettes of HBI from Venezuela to Houston, metallurgical coal from Richards Bay, South Africa to Rotterdam for the German auto makers, salt from Mexico to Japan, iron ore from Brazil to China for steelmaking, cement from Asia to West Africa, aluminum ingots from Malaysia to Japan, coffee and cocoa from Africa to America, bauxite from Port Kamsar, Guinea to Texas and dozens of other “minor” commodities that most people had never heard of – but were essential to the products they used every day.

  The majority of the Blue Sea fleet, though, was clustered around the chokepoint of global shipping – the antiquated and often congested seaports that strain to handle the endlessly increasing demands for loading and discharging bulk cargo.

  “Don’t look at me,” Spyrolaki laughed and flashed the same mischievous smile that had landed him on the cover of countless Greek tabloids over the years. “It was Aphrodite’s job to move the pushpins,” he said.

  “What a load of bullshit,” she sang out rhythmically without looking up.

  “I do not like that language young lady,” the Captain cautioned his daughter.

  Despite their constant bickering, Captain Spyros couldn’t help but smile when he looked at his children. They were the accomplishment of which he was most proud. That was why he was feeling uneasy about the changes that were about to occur at Blue Sea Shipping & Trading. Deep down the Captain knew it was time for his traditional Greek shipping to evolve. His fleet of dry cargo ships was approaching the end of their useful lives and his children believed the business needed to adapt if it was going to thrive in the future.

  “But daddy,” she said and flashed a reef of dazzlingly white teeth. “My language was not bad; I was just referring to Spyrolaki’s cargo of fertilizer,” she explained. “It really was an impressive load of bullshit he was able to carry. Good work, brother.”

  “The important thing now is that we are about to have an open ship in Buenos Aires,” the Captain said as he pulled out the pushpin representing the vessel Blue Horizon and jabbed it into the pockmarked port of Buenos Aires. “So kids, tell me what she’s doing next,” he demanded.

  “Why don’t you ask the boy with the golden pajamas,” Aphrodite quipped as she carefully drew a ruler-straight red line through a fraudulent $495.50 invoice for waste oil disposal. “I believe he is still looking for a cargo,” she tattled.

  “What?” the Captain gasped and turned to his son.

  “Thanks, Aphrodite,” Spyrolaki said.

  “Is this true?” the Captain asked with horror. “Are you really still looking for a cargo for a ship that is about to begin discharging? She will be open in a matter of days.”

  “I told him he should have fixed her last Friday,” Aphrodite interjected as she got up from her chair and tugged down on the leopard print skirt. “But Romeo over there decid
ed to go SCUBA diving off Chios with his new girlfriend,” she added and began walking away from the trading desk in her high heels. “Now if you will excuse me.”

  “Where are you going?” the Captain asked his daughter.

  “To the elevators,” she said. “Uncle Vassilis just called from the lobby. Apparently Mr. Robert Fairchild has finally arrived from New York and I am going to give him a proper greeting,” she said and curtsied.

  Chapter 20

  The Volatility of Shipping

  After operating expenses, a Panamax bulk carrier trading spot would have earned $1 million in 1986, $3.5 million in 1989, $1.5 million in 1992, $2.5 million in 1995, and $16.5 million in 2007! A new Panamax would have cost $13.5 million in 1986, $30 million in 1990, $19 million in 1999 and $48 million in 2007.

  Dr. Martin Stopford, Maritime Economics

  Coco Jacobsen gazed out the frost-covered window of the Grand Hotel in Davos, Switzerland. Watching the snow fall softly on a forest of cedar trees made him ache to be back in the mountains of Norway where he always spent Christmas when his parents were still alive.

  As the shipping magnate stared through the grid of leaded panes, he was irritated by his malaise. Here he was on the brink of completing the biggest deal of his career with the Greek and preparing to harvest a banner crop of free money on Wall Street, yet for some reason he didn’t feel happy.