Fun and surprisingly rigorous biography of Aristotle Onassis, Stavros Niarchos and other great Greek entrepreneurs who dominated 20th century shipping.
Onassis is the primary focus of the book. An Anatolian Greek who barely escaped the Greco-Turkish war with his life, Onassis made it to Buenos Aires with a few dollars in his pocket, and built a quick mini-fortune out of nothing in a matter of a few years. But it was in the decades to follow that he became one of the wealthiest men in the world, dominating global shipping. And then he shocked the world yet again, not just by marrying a Kennedy, but by marrying Jackie Kennedy.
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Author Doris Lilly was a society columnist for the New York Post and New York Daily Mirror in the 1960s and 70s. She got her start as a "contract actress" in the old Hollywood studio system, and there are theories out there that she was the real-world model for the character Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. So you'd be forgiven if you assumed this would be an amateurish biography. I did.
But I was wrong. Those Fabulous Greeks is well-researched and meticulous--to the point where the author not only has command of the nuances of shipping economics, but she also teaches the how the 20th century's major geopolitical events impacted those shipping economics.
You'll learn plenty of other history here too, much of which I should know better than I do: see for example the First and Second Balkan Wars, which played out in the years leading up to World War I, the vicious post-WWI conflict between Greece and Turkey, and the Greek Civil War, which erupted after WWII. The author teaches the reader about these events, how they upended the lives of her various biographical subjects, and she does it with a capably-turned phrase.
Finally, yes, our author was a well-known gossip columnist in her day, so it just wouldn't be right if she didn't throw in all kinds of fun society tidbits from across the century. It makes the book a ball. And because the society Lilly talks about is from the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s, it all seems somehow more elegant, more romantic.
But then again, was it? Today, hardly anybody remembers the "famous" entrepreneurs, actors, journalists and celebrities from those eras, much less about the clubs and restaurants where they dined and seduced each other. It makes you wonder who among all the people "everyone knows" today will be forgotten too. It's a healthy--and liberating--reminder.
A final word about the author: Doris Lilly died of cancer in 1991. But if you Google the various obituaries written about her at the time, you'll see that nobody really knew her age. She's listed variously to have died at age 60, 64 or 69. Good on you Doris! You kept everyone guessing.
[Readers, the notes below might be worth skimming if you're curious about the shipping industry and want to learn more about its early days. The rest of you, feel free to stop reading here. What follows are just my notes to the text.]
Notes:
Preface:
ix "There are scoops in this book that ought to make world headlines. I hope there are also some insights into people and the situations of the protagonists that will explain what, until now, has seemed incongruous and inexplicable."
Part One: Onassis
Chapter 1
3ff Socrates Onassis, Aristotle's father, born in Kayseri, Turkey, 1878, during a period when there were more Greeks in Turkish Asia Minor than in Greece itself; note that Turkey had been dominating Greece for some 400 years and Greece had only regained its independence less than 50 years before. Greeks in Turkish Asia Minor as an oppressed minority, seen as infidels in the eyes of Turks, subjects of the Sultan for centuries. The author likens them to Jews in Tsarist Russia: they handled trading, acted as intermediaries, etc. Socrates starts a tobacco business and moves to Smyrna [now Izmir, in Turkey], gets married, has a daughter and a son: Aristotle Socrates Onassis.
5ff Aristotle's mother dies in 1912 when he's six, his grandmother raises him; in 1915 his father remarries, he has a good relationship with his stepmother.
6-7 On World War I and Gallipoli; Smyrna was only 200 mi from there, some foreshadowing here about Winston Churchill [we'll see much later in the book that Onassis had a rather unexpected friendship with Churchill, and it indirectly led to him meeting Jackie Kennedy]. Churchill resigned his post after the disaster at Gallipoli, and then, much later, "would spend many a leisurely hour" aboard Aristotle's yacht talking about these long ago events. Greece, previously neutral in WWI, joined the war on the Allies' side in 1917, and when the war ended the Onassis family had survived it well, with Aristotle's father one of the three leading merchants in Smyrna dealing in grain, hides, tobacco as well as storage and loans.
8ff Then in 1922: an explosion of violence in 1922 as Mustafa Ataturk came to power in Turkey; Turkey violated the Sèvres Treaty and attempted to retake Smyrna and other territory in Greek Anatolia that they had ceded during the 1920 treaty between Turkey and Greece. On the atrocities that followed; Aristotle, now 16, his father now jailed; his stepmother and sisters were sent to an evacuation center to await transport to Greece while he and his grandmother stayed back at the family home, until a Turkish General requisitioned the house and evicted them. Aristotle spoke such perfect Turkish that he was actually asked to stay and make himself useful: the general liked him, he had a knack for making influential friends, likewise he was able to curry favor with the American military in the region as well; he used this to try to locate his family as various aunts and uncles had been killed or executed; he managed to get the US council to intercede with his sisters and stepmother to be evacuated to Greece; but he needed to bribe people to get his father out of Turkish prison; Aristotle actually organized a March of some fifty leading Turkish businessmen who were his peers and friends of his father to form a literal parade, carrying a banner protesting the arrest of his father and demanding his release, this probably saved his father's life.
14 Thrilling story here about how Aristotle managed to slip out of questioning at the prison where he had been visiting his father; he was more or less saved by US Marines here; this is the source of Aristotle's deep love for America.
15ff Later, Aristotle finds himself criticized fairly harshly by certain family members who thought that he spent too much money bribing his father out of prison, his father actually even agrees too! Also at this point he, along with all the other Anatolian Greeks, were considered stateless people; Aristotle decides to go to Buenos Aires with maybe a hundred dollars in his pocket. Essentially he resented the treatment he received from his family and decided to to make a new life elsewhere. "It was six years before he returned, a millionaire."
Chapter 2
17ff On the disputed details about Aristotle Onassis' time during the conflict over Smyrna, in particular see the letter from the Turkish Embassy in Washington, which gives its own version of events. On the estimated 1 million Greek deaths in Turkish Asian Minor between 1918 and 1923.
19 He first gets to Naples, with three weeks to wait before his ship departs, he finds a cheap place to stay with a landlady and her daughter, a young widow. Note this quote from the author, one of a long list of delightful turns of phrase she uses throughout this book: "If he and the voluptuous widow ever put the show on the road, we'll never know and Ari won't tell, but when he left Naples his landlady tearfully refused payment." Also on the smelly steerage-class passage he took, on practically a garbage ship, along with another thousand steerage passengers, to take him to Buenos Aires from Naples in 1923. He was down to his last $100 of capital.
21ff Note the story here of a Greek man living in Buenos Aires, a fruit peddler who heard about a ship full of Greek immigrants due to arrive, who ran down to the waterfront looking for a friend of a friend or any news of friends from back home; he met Aristotle and they became friends; Buenos Aires in those days had 2 million people and it was wealthy from selling grain and cattle to European war belligerents.
24ff On the silence of the Greek community in Buenos Aires about Aristotle's early years here, likely he was into some sort of shady dealings; he finds a low-end job with the phone company. He starts saving money, then gets a night job as a telephone operator.
26ff On Ari not needing sleep: "To sleep is to steal hours of life."
28 "Argentina was the only country in the world at that time where people thought it was perfectly natural to have a large steak for breakfast for twenty cents. If you wanted eggs on top the cost was double. Eggs were expensive."
29 "Aristotle has a fantastic memory for details and statistics. He remembers everyone who helped him, and that, my darlings, is as rare among the super-rich as gratitude is among the super-poor." [This quote gives you a heck of a sense of both the author's style and Aristotle's vibe.]
28ff Onassis gets samples of Turkish-style tobacco from his father and essentially stalks the boss of a leading Argentine cigarette manufacturer in order to sell it to his company: his first order was for $10,000 worth of tobacco and his 5% commission of $500 is enough to keep him going for a year. "It also was his first private capital, and the foundation of one of the world's great fortunes. Right in character, he didn't spend it and he didn't quit his job." [As the BowTiedBull says: Don't give up your W-2 until your side business 2x your job income!] His next giant step was making/manufacturing cigarettes: much of the work was done by hand here, he also started the business on credit: "...instinctively he knew that the key to wealth is credit, using your own money as collateral." Also on how Aristotle sold some of these cigarettes under the name Bis which was an already existing famous Argentine brand and he got sued, "the first in a long chain of lawsuits which has dragged after him ever since."
Chapter 3
33 Interesting anecdote here about a tobacco grower who sold Aristotle a large amount of tobacco, but Aristotle didn't have enough cash to pay up front, so the man gave him credit until he sold it. "He would never forget this man." Years later the same man was gambling at the casino in Monte Carlo that Aristotle Onassis owned and lost many thousands. "When Onassis heard the man's name he immediately made up the loss himself."
33 The once-stateless person from Anatolia was now a citizen of Argentina based on false birth information that he had supplied to get an identity card; then he was also made a Greek citizen under a Greek government law. Also because of his age when he arrived to Argentina he was neither fully Greek nor fully Argentine.
34ff On women and the morals of the Argentine culture at this time; similar to Italy and other Catholic countries; on Aristotle, who was charming to women; on the three big night clubs in Buenos Aires and the nightclub scene that was supposedly in those days superior to anything in the United States, and rivaled anything in Europe; a description of the famous Tabaris Club, "The upper tier was a series of private rooms, each with a table and a couch. If you wished you signaled the headwaiter, who would bring you a beautiful girl and then pull the curtains tight, and you were snug as bugs in a rug. The Tabaris was in the business of providing women and had a staff of over fifty young girls dressed in evening clothes. Mostly they were imported from Poland, France, and Russia. The road to ruin in those days was called the road to Buenos Aires. Mistresses often accompanied their men to the Tabaris, but nice girls stayed home. Who needed a nice girl at the Tabaris? It would be like carting peanut butter sandwiches to a dinner at Maxim's." [The author's gossip-column style here really works, it really gives you a good sense of the vibe.]
36 Comments on Aristotle not being a hit-and-run romance kind of guy; he was never really a playboy; he had his first real romance in Naples with the young widow, and then his second woman of his life was a dancer in Anna Pavlova's ballet company which was touring South America at the time. The dancer fell in love with him so hard that she quit her career and vowed to never leave Buenos Aires unless with him; Pavlova and Aristotle tried to work out a deal: both of them wanted her to continue her career, but she refused. "The dancer would hang in for a year, following him like a blister."
38 His first shipping deal: Onassis heard about a ship that had sunk off of Montevideo, and he arranged a salvage and raise it; he repaired the boat and then sold it as a going steamship for an enormous profit. Note also Argentina didn't have an income tax at this time.
39ff Interesting nugget here on the absolute stupidity of the Greek government over a trade dispute between Greece and Bulgaria: Bulgaria refused to sign a trade treaty with Greece, so the Greek government put a 1,000% import duty on any goods from any country without a commercial arrangement with Greece; the Greek government failed to foresee that other countries--including Argentina--would respond by raising their tariffs by 10 times on Greek products, and this entire problem landed right onto Onassis' business. "Onassis couldn't believe the Greek government could be so careless. Couldn't they foresee the disastrous result of such a move?" This was the catalyst that sent him straight home to present a memorandum to the Greek authorities. He then has an illustrious reunion with his family, although his father was ailing at this point. The government quickly exempted Argentina from the tariffs and Aristotle then found his way into a Greek government post as an "envoy extraordinary": he was to undertake trade negotiations with the Argentine government as soon as possible. "Six years after his arrival in Buenos Aires as a stateless immigrant with a few dollars and no prospects, he was returning with two nationalities, a million dollars, a diplomatic passport, and entrusted with a delicate assignment that would affect international relations. He had indeed done well."
Chapter 4
On how Buenos Aires and Argentina were less affected by the stock market crash [reading this book really drives home what a tragedy Argentina turned out to be when it was undeniably wealthy, had a robust currency, and had every advantage you could imagine in the first decades of the 20th century. Now it has a currency crisis and a revolution every 15 years]; on Onassis and his job as Greek consul general in Argentina, dealing with shipping and import/export which, per other competitors, gave him an unfair advantage; he had access to "every door in the Argentine banking and business world", he gave up the job in 1935 but by that point he didn't need any of the advantages any more!
44 Onassis now starts learning everything he could about shipping: the Depression deepened and it started to cripple the Greek shipowners, the economic impact then began to seep into Argentina; note here also a wealthy daughter of a leading Buenos Aires family in difficult financial straits offered herself in marriage to Aristotle, but he turned her down. She was horrified, pointing out that she thought a Greek would jump at the chance to marry into Argentine society. Onassis replied, "Not this Greek."
46ff [One takeaway from the following pages is how incredibly valuable a big downturn is to someone young and hungry: it is opportunity! In contrast, big downturns destroy the older people who can't take risks, who have lost their appetite, who have lost the plasticity to handle the interim losses. Stay young, stay hungry.] On the severe doldrums of the shipping industry at this time, but Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos both saw it as an opportunity to get involved. "...he became obsessed with what his friends said was an insane desire to be a shipowner." [This mindset, this compulsion to get into shipping, is exactly what The Shipping Man talks about!] At the time old ships were selling at 5 cents on the dollar, more or less the same price they could be sold for scrap; thus you could buy the ship and sell it for scrap at breakeven, but the ship had potentially many times more value than the purchase price if you were lucky enough to find a cargo; you could earn your initial capital back in a year. [Of course as The Shipping Man makes clear it's at times like this that there are no cargoes to be had!] He starts visiting shipyards all over Europe, he meets Stavros Livanos, the dean of the London Greeks, who was no help to him at all. Also on scale benefits in shipping: a 10,000 ton ship carried double the cargo of a 5,000 ton ship, but it did not cost twice as much in fuel or wages.
49ff Onassis then hears about a real bargain: ships laid up in the St. Lawrence River, rusting, owned by the Canadian National Steamship Company, 10 of them available for sale at $30,000 apiece. He offers $20,000, while his the London-based Greek shipping fraternity told him that he was crazy to buy ships with no cargoes; he then loses heart a little bit and cuts his offer to two ships, later expanding it to six. He was later incredibly irritated at himself: he could have had all ten! [I know the feeling: sometimes you get cold feet and dial back a bet, only later to realize how sickeningly much money you left on the table.] Note also that he couldn't get a loan from British banks. "Even though he had enough money to buy ten times as many ships, he hated to use his own capital. It was the story of the tiny tobacco factory all over again, and it is the secret of most of the world's great fortunes. Use OPM (Other People's Money) and keep what's yours for leverage and collateral. Pay interest on the money you borrow, and if the deal is sound the interest is only a tiny fraction of potential profits. Of course, never pay--and I hope you'll excuse the expression--taxes. If you're a genius and a Greek shipowner, it's all legal." Two years later the world economy began to improve a little bit, and Europe started up a bit of an arms race; Onassis took his ships out of mothballs one at a time; he was quickly showing profits. Using the time he was Greek consul to his advantage, he registered some of his ships in Greece and some in Argentina; the Greek wage scale for seamen was the lowest in Europe, Greek safety standards were lower, and there wasn't a very strong Greek seamen's union.
51 Note this kafka-esque problem with Greek regulations: Greek shipping regulations required all ship crew to be Greek, but one of his ships in Rotterdam lacked a Greek cook [!] when there not only wasn't any Greek cook, there wasn't even a single Greek anywhere in the entire city. Onassis then switched the ship's registry to Panama: Panama was the first country to invent the "flag of convenience" where any ship of any nationality or any shipowner of any nation can register a ship in Panama and fly the Panamanian flag, and Panama had the lowest tax rates, the lowest insurance premiums. "Onassis was a pioneer in registering his ships under the Panamanian flag of convenience." Note that Honduras, Liberia and other countries have joined competition here.
52 Finally Aristotle's father came to Buenos Aires for a long visit, he then died soon after returning to Greece. By now Aristotle owned a fleet of ships and wasn't even 30 years old.
Chapter 5
54ff Now Onassis starts making a lot of money on his old freighters that he got for cheap; he decides he wants to have newbuilds, and he wanted to own tankers, because the industry was shifting from coal to oil; he wanted to build the biggest oil tankers in the world. On a 1934 trip to Europe he meets Stavros Niarchos, who played a huge role in his life; Onassis also meets Ingeborg Dedichen, a Norwegian whose husband (owner of one of Norway's biggest whaling fleets) had left her, she was 10 years older and taller than Aristotle. "Sparks began to fly." Also "all his serious romances have lasted for years." They were together ten years and he remained friends with her ever since.
56ff Onassis meets Stavros Niarchos, also in 1934, his future brother-in-law, sometime partner and hated rival; their relationship "is a saga in itself." Stavros is 26, Onassis is 28. Stavros also had family money, he was one of the old Greek shipping families that didn't really deign to accept somebody like Onassis. Also there was a vague mistrust of Greeks who succeeded under the Turks versus truly "Greek" Greeks. Niarchos was raised wealthy, but right after he finished University, but right before he could enter law school, his father lost all his money; thus when Onassis was first getting his feet under him in Buenos Aires, Niarchos was working to make back the money that would put him back into the life he had before.
62ff Neither man was genuinely accepted into the established Greek shipping world. Onassis at this point a big head start over Niarchos, he'd already made millions, already owned his own portfolio of tankers; Narchos wanted to catch up and pass him. "Onassis was not a man to be passed. Each man longed first for recognition from the stuffy fraternity of Greek ship owners, and then to lead the pack. Each man wanted acceptance in society. Each man was hell-bent on making the biggest fortune there was to be made in shipping. The lives and careers of Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos were dead set on a collision course."
63ff Interesting comments on how tankers were much more automated than other types of shipping: they could be easily loaded, and they didn't require dozens of longshoreman who were unionized in major ports. Also the tankers that Onassis ordered from the Goteborg shipyards in Sweden would be 15,000 ton tankers costing $700,000 each, with 25% of the money paid during construction, much of which could be financed. Onassis would have ten years to pay off the balance, all of which could be financed, so this fit right into his wheelhouse of using OPM.
65ff On his first newbuild, the Ariston, launched in 1938, carrying a Swedish flag; its first charter was to ship oil to Japan, and the ship earned $600,000 in its first year versus a $700,000 purchase price financed over 10 years [!!!! Yep, sometimes you can find these kinds of economics in shipping. Then again, you can find the opposite...]. Also shipping was booming under the threat of war in those days [war tends to be bullish for shipping]. And then in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, the neutral Swedish government seized two of his three new ships, not wanting them to be used by the belligerents. Then, after Germany attacked Norway in 1940, the Norwegians seized his third ship, thus all three of his ships sat essentially in mothballs for the duration of the WWII [correction: war is bullish for shipping if you can actually use your ships!]. He still had six ships sailing with Panamanian flags plus his interests in Argentina. He came to the United States to try to buy ships: this was a year before Pearl Harbor; then when Italy invaded Greece, and then later Germany occupied Greece, he could no longer get tobacco from Europe for his cigarette manufacturing business. He began importing tobacco from Cuba and Brazil but it was inferior in quality and also tastes in Argentina had changed.
Chapter 6
70ff On Onassis meeting Alberto Dodero in Argentina when Juan Perón took over in Argentina [note that Dodero was a shipping magnate who had helped Perón in his political career, although in the long run he ended up having his entire shipping fleet nationalized, purchased for peanuts by the Perón dictatorship, as he fell out of their good graces].
72ff On Onassis traveling between Beverly Hills, New York and Argentina; on the cafe and high society of those days: the author slips into gossip column mode here and talks about some of the women who haunted southern California high society in those days: Simone Simon ("the original pouty-lipped sex kitten"), Veronica Lake (actress and "very close friend" of Aristotle Onassis, she would later die of alcoholism at age 50), Lucy Cochrane (who Diego Rivera painted in the nude, and who later came to be known as C.Z. Guest), Drew Mallory (who later married Henry J. Heinz), and so on. [The nostalgia here is great, it's also a little mournful, as all of these people are not only dead but forgotten. Our culture mass-produces celebrities, chews them up, and then forgets them.]
75ff On J. Edgar Hoover receiving a report that Onassis was anti-American; Hoover actually wrote that Onassis' activities and movements should be "carefully scrutinized"; the author foreshadows here saying this letter disappeared from the war shipping administration and was mysteriously leaked in the 1950s [see page 133 below].
77ff Good story here about Onassis getting involved in whaling, with just a small $15,000 pocket money type operation with a dilapidated tugboat in Northern California. Another one of the author's introductory comments here: "They can talk about the luck of the Irish, which is soda bread compared to the luck of the Greeks like Onassis and Niarchos, who should be immortalized in song and story. Now just listen to this and forget the leprechauns." Basically he only caught 40 whales because the ship's harpoon gunner was a drunk Swedish guy who couldn't even hit them, but they made a fortune selling whale meat and whale livers: the meat went to mink farmers and the whale livers produced desperately needed vitamin A.
78ff On how Onassis' ships carried war cargoes for the US war effort; no one could buy new ships in the US, especially if they weren't US citizens; thus Onassis would purchase dreadfully dilapidated wrecks and repair them; also on political developments in Argentina where a conservative candidate in an upcoming election was pro the Allied side, contrary to public sentiment, and then in 1943 the military organized a coup to prevent this election; this military junta included Colonel Juan Perón, who would be elected president in 1946 and quickly consolidate power into a dictatorship within the next few years. Also comments on Aristotle's social rise both in Buenos Aires and Hollywood, as well as among the Greek shipowners in New York; then on his increasing intimacy with Alberto Dodero in Argentina.
81ff On Onassis' amazingly good luck over the course of World War II: he didn't lose a single ship, even though of the 450 Greek ships that participated in Allied supply operations, 360 had been lost; he still had all of his Panamanian ships, the income from them was tax-free, and even his newbuild tankers that were seized and mothballed in Sweden were unscathed after the war [!]. He was worth an estimated $30 million at this point. "It had not been a bad war for Aristotle Socrates Onassis."
Chapter 7
83ff On the post war period where Stavros Livanos and others among the already established Greek shipowners were assuming there would be a post-war downcycle and "they didn't intend to be caught with their ships down." Interestingly, Onassis once again went against the tide and searched for new tonnage, buying when everyone else was selling, and selling what everyone else was buying. Interesting comments here on how Onassis had no interest in buying ships from American shipyards: their prices were outrageous and shipping union wage scales were too high. European and Japanese shipyards were destroyed after WWII, but there were plenty of government-owned ships that might come on the market soon. Aristotle also made New York his home at this point, living in Oyster Bay, NY.
85ff Onassis is also 39 now and thinking about getting married--to a nice Greek girl of course. On the beautiful daughters of Stavros Livanos, Eugenia and Athina ("Tina"); initially Onassis asked to marry Eugenia, but she refused; Tina actually decided she wanted marry Aristotle, and she would. This is all while Onassis was scrambling to get financing to buy a bunch of ships from the United States using loans from American banks.
88 Note the throwaway reference here to Porfirio Rubirosa, which sent me down a rabbit hole to learn all about this Dominican playboy--who was a better James Bond than any James Bond ever was.
Chapter 8
90ff Mr. and Mrs. Aristotle Onassis, Aristotle now 40 and his new wife Tina age 17, are married with a honeymoon on a houseboat down the Intracoastal Waterway all the way to Key West. [I'd love to do that trip one day...] But then with the rise of Juan Perón in Argentina they had to continue their honeymoon in Buenos Aires.
91ff Discussion again here of Alberto Dodero and his wife Betty Sunmark and their huge home in Uruguay across the river in Carrasco (the author later says that it was so huge that it hosted the entire International Film Festival, housing agents, actress, producers, starlets, everybody); never short of invited guests, they would pay their guests' expenses to fly down, they could to stay as long as they liked [Great friends to have!]. On how Alberto had landed on his feet when Perón took over; his wife Betty was close with Evita Perón; on Dodero stashing as much of his wealth across the river in Uruguay when Perón took over, also Perón couldn't show his friends special favors. [Anyone wealthy in any country where the regime can turn adversarial--thus this means all nation-states--has to store some wealth outside the reach of that nation-state. And anyone who hopes to be wealthy at some point in the future ought to read Perpetual Traveler for some of the thinking behind why this is so important.]
93ff On how when Tina opened the envelope containing her dowry Onassis was rather disappointed: rumor has it there were only two ships promised, rather than millions of tons of shipping capacity hoped for; ultimately it was only one ship and only the down payment had been made, thus the new owners had to make mortgage payments on it! Tina's father Livanos also bought them a half million dollar house, but it was deeded to a corporation set up for his daughter.
94ff Also interesting comments here about black- and gray-market commerce happening after the war in the United States as wartime controls were still in effect to control rising prices: say for example if you wanted a refrigerator or especially a new car you had to also offer a trade-in--and they would pay you next to nothing for it--and then you also had to pay extra under the table; there's also a shortage of building materials, a shortage of housing, etc. This is all contrasted to the Onassis' new home, where "there was a shortage of nothing."
95ff On the (highly understandable) fear both the banking and the insurance industries had for Greek-owned shipping; the ships "had shown an alarming tendency toward accidents."
96ff [The author does a really good job here describing the economics of the tanker industry: she might be a gossip columnist, but this is a genuinely rigorous book!] On the next stage of Onassis' career, which involved owning brand new enormous tankers built to his specifications, using OPM; he would sign a contract with an oil company for a time charter for a long period of time using a ship that would satisfy their standards, but with a ship that was not yet built; also the American oil companies didn't have enough tankers of their own: they actually didn't want them, because they had to sail them with American flags and pay American wages--it was cheaper to hire foreign tankers [An early proto-example of "offshoring" in a few senses of the word...]; also the shipping industry had suffered a lot of capacity losses due to the war. The oil industry also thought that shipping rates would surely rise and that the market for oil would increase substantially over the next few years after the war ended, thus it would be good to lock in a fixed price for transporting crude. So Onassis would set a contract for a time charter with an oil company and use the time charter contract as collateral with the bank to pay for the newbuild ship. He started by convincing the Mobil Oil Company to sign a 60-month charter for a "gigantic" 28,000 ton tanker [this was a huge ship in those days but note today we have double-hull tankers of up to 300,000 tons that can carry 2 million barrels of oil], and Onassis got financing from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to build his first ship.
98 The next savvy thing Onassis did was negotiate with Bethlehem Steel, which at the time owned the Sparrows Point Shipyard in Baltimore; it was at the point of closing down, Onassis ordered these huge tankers, called in those days "supertankers" and then signed a time charter with Texaco too. Eventually Onassis ordered five supertankers at a total cost of $40 million. "Onassis had engineered the whole thing without putting up a dime of his own money." The charters insured that the ships would pay for themselves within five or six years, all sailing under Panamanian flags with no taxes. [Extremely, extremely creative.]
99 Onassis' marriage with Tina was apparently happy, they gave birth to a son, Alexander. Also note this brief discussion here of the US, Britain and Russian dividing up Europe "as casually as a trio of Westchester housewives would divide a luncheon check." [This author really does have a fun turn of phrase.] Then on the Greek civil War in 1946, and then the Truman Doctrine to protect the world from communism which would require shipping all kinds of goods to threatened countries, again helping the shipping industry and driving a post-war shipping boom.
Chapter 9
102ff On the US Maritime Commission now selling off surplus 16,000 T2 tanker ships for just $1.5m each, but they had to be purchased by American-owned corporations only; so Onassis (as well as Stavros Niarchos) set up companies using Americans as front shareholders but with his money behind it. [Sounds a lot like the same thing likely done today to take advantage of US government polity to favor doing business with "minority-owned" businesses...] Also comments on the 1949 Berlin Airlift, but putting that in context: there was even more transport by ship to bring oil and commodities to Western Europe; and shipping rates soared.
103ff Now Onassis wants to get more seriously into the whaling business: he got all the necessary equipment via war surplus; he went to Germany which had an entire industry idled by the war and forbidden to engage in shipbuilding: but technically the "conversion" of a ship is not "shipbuilding" so Onassis brought 17 Canadian whaling "catcher" boats and used a surplus T2 tanker converted into the floating whale processing factory; suddenly he had a whaling fleet, manned by German sailors, and it was tremendously successful. The author writes about how gross the entire whaling process is.
106ff Here's an almost unbelievable story about a conflict with Peru in/near its territorial waters: The Peruvians were sick and tired of watching whaling fleets get rich on the whales making their annual migrations along the Peruvian coast while they got nothing; Onassis' fleet was ordered by Peru to stay at least 200 miles out to sea (he claims he complied), but still Peru sent out two destroyers "to show they menat business," and--unbelievably--these were two Canadian frigates Onassis had sold Peru right after the war [!] The destroyers captured the some of the whaling ships, including the large processing ship as well as their crews; the Peruvian Air Force even bombed them [!] using a surplus US bomber, but missed; this was a literal war between Onassis and Peru, it turned out Onassis had purchased three different types of insurance with Lloyds of London: against war risks, against trading risks, and against detention of his ships; from the last policy alone he was able to collect $30,000 a day for his ships when they were held in Peruvian port. Everything was solved as Onassis agreed to pay a $3 million fine but that was ultimately paid by Lloyds too! Finally as the Japanese started to scale up their whaling industry and Norwegian whalers sued Onassis for allegedly hunting out of season as well as hunting protected bluefin whales, Onassis sold his whalers to Japan.
109ff On the outbreak of the Korean War Onassis cabled the American government offering his ships and his personal services, although "the government failed to take advantage of his generous offer."
111 Aristotle and Tina welcome a daughter, Christina; they're spending most of their time in Europe now mostly in the south of France; at this point in his life he had built, operated and then sold the world's largest whaling fleet, he had a private war with Peru and won it, he created and built the most modern tanker fleet ever, he opened a deal with Saudi Arabia but failed to complete it because it threatened the largest oil companies in the world [we will learn much more about this in Chapter 11], he was indicted by the US government for fraud, survived a boycott by oil companies, his German ship orders with the German shipbuilding industry were literally keeping the German shipyards alive, and he controlled nearly 100 ships, equalling as much as 1.5 million deadweight tons. Also comments here on the yacht-building contest between Onassis and Stavros Niarchos, which is reminiscent of the yachtfoolery between Oracle's Larry Ellison and Microsoft's Paul Allen.
114 Finally on Onassis helping Prince Rainier of Monaco with an alliance to literally buy [!] and revive Monte Carlo. "The few million he invested brought him world fame and a lot of headaches. He later called it 'the worst mistake of my life.'"
Chapter 10
116ff On the world now "discovering" the Greek shipowners; articles on Onassis in Time, in Reader's Digest, etc.
118ff The author discusses the Onassis yacht, the Christina, at least what it looked like when she was on it: barstools made of polished whale teeth; leather covering the stools made of whale's testicles, El Greco paintings, a ship's hospital with x-ray machines and surgical equipment, even a world-class communications center; people like the King of Yugoslavia, ex-King Farouk and other famous industrialists, actresses, etc., would spend time on it.
121ff On bickering and haggling between the Prince Rainier and Onassis; and later, in 1967, a special law passed by Monaco that effectively forced Onassis to sell his shares in the principality for a fixed price of $16 a share, well below what Onassis said they were worth, although Onassis still cleared $10 million from his initial $1 million investment, but he didn't set foot in Monaco for several years. [You can never trust a national government at any level; neither at the nation-state level nor at the principality level!]
122 Note also the descriptor "Graustarkian," which sent this reader down another rabbit hole to learn of the late 19th/early 20th century bestselling novels by George Barr McCutcheon about the fictional Eastern European country Graustark and the various intrigues of its royalty.
122ff On Onassis' indictment for fraud by the US government in the mid-1950s; a separate, unrelated congressional inquiry unearthed an investigation into US surplus ships that were now under foreign control; on the resultant bad press in the USA for Greek shippers, some of these ships had been used in trade with Red China, which at the time was fighting GIs in Korea. There were mountains of testimony and legal documents; Onassis used 375 lawyers (???) in the USA alone. The head of Twentieth Century Fox and a fellow Greek, Spyros Skouras, went to see both Truman and Eisenhower as well as the Justice Department to try and see what was going on; a settlement was worked out where both Onassis and Livanos built and flagged ships in the USA to help the USA's shipping industry; the whole thing took years to settle. Another irony here was the Attorney General under Eisenhower happened to be Herbert Brownell, Jr. whose law firm had originally advised Onassis that what he did to buy these ships was legal in the first place. [The disturbing thing about American "justice" is that it is very far from just.]
126 Onassis was actually (discreetly) arrested: he was asked to come down to the marshall's office after he had finished lunch at The Colony Restaurant. Onassis actually was fingerprinted and mugshotted and briefly put in jail (for just a few minutes), then released on $10,000 bail. Ultimately Onassis paid the US government $7 million and then agreed to build 198,000 tons of tankers in the United States to be flagged by American flags. Onassis felt that "if he had done as much for the British shipbuilding industry as he did for the Americans, 'I would have been knighted. In America I was indicted.'"
Chapter 11
130ff The author describes Onassis as "preparing a coup" that threatened the largest oil companies in the world, as he essentially orchestrated a monopoly deal with the King of Saudia Arabia for the transport of all Arabian oil, this came out in January of 1954 as the king signed a deal to prioritize Onassis' fleet for his annual 40 million tons of oil transport. Gradually this would become a monopoly where all the oil would have to be shipped on Onassis or Saudi tankers at whatever rates Onassis and the Saudis wanted. Note that in 1951 Iran nationalized all of its oil and the CIA then staged a coup to overthrow Mohammed Mossadegh as a result, so the geopolitics of Middle East oil was on everybody's minds at this point. The British and US governments lodged formal protests with Saudi Arabia, and the American oil companies struck back against Onassis by no longer chartering any of his ships. "...it looked like the beginning of an international oil boycott of Onassis."
133ff Around the same time the secret J. Edgar Hoover letter written about Onassis was leaked to the media. [A total coincidence, I'm sure...]
134ff Also around the same time a series of lawsuits were filed against Onassis by Spyridon Catapodis in various jurisdictions, alleging a "miasma" of bribery, international intrigue, etc., including a fascinating allegation that Onassis had retained Hjalmar Schacht, who this author calls "Hitler's financial genius" who she writes had been "deodorized from his long personal association with the Fuhrer." [I think the truth is way more complex... note that he was jailed by Hitler's regime and sent to Dachau. Schacht was the central banker for Germany during the late 1920s during the Weimar government: he's one of the key figures in Liaquat Ahamed's highly readable book Lords of Finance.] Concerning Onassis, Hjalmar Shacht used his many Neareast connections to helped finalize Onassis' deal with the Arabs.
135 On more allegations that Onassis used disappearing ink on a contract with Catapodis; that Catapodis couldn't get access to Onassis at all, that he chased Onassis to the Nice airport where he spat at him and choked him, then later sued him for breach of contract.
137ff Onassis is on the defensive here as he has idle ships on his hands now, and can't get charters. But then he's saved again by the Suez crisis!! [Holy cow this guy is flucky.] The closure of the canal added a large amount of ton miles to the entire shipping industry because oil now had to go twice as far: all the way around Africa. Freight rates exploded higher and, now, luckily, Onassis had a bunch of available ships because he had been boycotted by the oil industry. Freight rates went up more than 10x [!] and so his ships were suddenly unbelievably profitable.
140 "Suez was the dividing line. Without it, he could very possibly have been wiped out. With it, he was as solid as a chunk of Carrara marble." Onassis became more cautious after this, and did not overextend--or even come close to overextending--himself like he had been before. "... everything that followed Suez has been an anti-climax."
141ff Finally, on increasing friction in Onassis's marriage to Tina.
Chapter 12
144 Cute joke here:
A London schoolteacher asks a rich little Greek schoolboy, "Where is the capital of Greece?"
The boy replies, "Some is in the bank of England, but most is in numbered bank accounts in Switzerland."
144 As the author puts it: "Almost all the rich Greeks have made and keep their money safely outside of Greece."
145ff 1958: on Onassis thinking he had locked up concessions for owning a new Greek airline and shipyard, but then Stavros Niarchos elbows in to get in on this as well: Niarchos was a close friend of Queen Federika (a whole side discussion here about her: she was a Hanover so she was the granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II, she was also a member of the Hitler youth; later in 1967 when a military junta (easily) seized control of Greece [yet again explaining why "the capital of Greece" is stored in numbered Swiss bank accounts...], the royal family went into exile in Italy and never returned; the Greek monarchy was abolished in 1973). Niarchos' attempt to elbow in on these business concessions actually increased the conflict between him and Onassis to where they would never be partners in anything again after this. Here, a "compromise" was worked out where Niarchos got the shipyard and Onassis got the airline.
147ff Now to Onassis and his famous affair with opera singer Maria Callas; it happened on a one-month cruise on his yacht; it led to the end of Onassis' as well as Callas' marriages; but interestingly Tina cited Onassis' infidelity with someone else in her divorce filing: Jeanne Rhinelander, who had an affair with Onassis and who was good friends with Tina too. Tina had hired private detectives, the whole thing was a big scandal and the family couldn't get them to reconcile. Tina later remarried the Marquess of Blandford, the son of the 10th Duke of Marlborough.
Chapter 13
152ff Onassis and opera singer Maria Callas lived together openly for the next ten years. On Maria's childhood in Astoria, NY; her ambitious mother took her to Greece and entered her into the National Conservatory, how she was big and ungainly as a teenager, how she basically had her professional debut right before Italy conquered Greece, and then how she continued to perform during the war in return for food.
155ff Interesting commentary here on how the Greeks hated the Germans who occupied Greece after it fell to Italy in 1941, but they "rather liked" the Italians and often protected and helped retreating Italian soldiers once the tide of the war turned.
156 By 1944 Athens was liberated by the Greek resistance troops and civil war broke out; because Maria was known to be an anti-communist, she was threatened, her apartment was machine-gunned (although the author notes that the only casualties in the Callas household were the canaries), then the British occupied Athens and the war was over. However, the "liberated" Athens Opera Company refused to renew her contract, so she returned to America to retain her citizenship. Funny blurb here on how she got hired by the head of the Metropolitan Opera to sing Madame Butterfly but she weighed close to 200 pounds and had to lose weight! She then went to Italy where she met her husband, who devoted himself to her career.
158 Maria Callas was a monster, a stereotypical prima donna, fighting, arguing, being a tyrant... except she was docile with Onassis. She started singing less and less and finally more or less gave up her career for him. The author explains that because there was is no divorce in Italy in those days Onassis and Callas never married. Also his children hated her.
158ff There's an abrupt transition here to Sir Winston Churchill, who Onassis adored "like an American schoolboy catching flies for Joe DiMaggio." Also a story here about Churchill on Onassis's yacht while docked in Monte Carlo harbor while John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie were visiting Joe Kennedy nearby: Onassis asked if they'd like to meet Winston Churchill over cocktails and this is how he first met Jackie--Onassis gave her a tour of the yacht while Kennedy and Churchill "had a long and pleasant conversation."
160ff Comments here on shipping industry, how if you owned the largest jumbo tankers [now 100,000 tons, which was still only a third the size of a modern VLCC] you had far better economics than the rest of the industry because you can move oil faster and cheaper while most of the industry was still using older, less efficient and smaller tankers. These supertankers had a structural advantage. On the 1967 Arab-Israeli War which took day rates sky high all over again. Also on the law that American materials, including oil, must travel in American-flagged ships, which also helped Onassis because the part of his fleet owned inside the American trust [this was the trust company (in his children's names) he set up to resolve his conflict with the US government after the T2 surplus tanker sale sale scandal erupted in the 1950s] was able to carry a ton of oil over to Southeast Asia, thanks to the Vietnam War.
162ff More on Greece here, note that Onassis is now spending more time there, making improvements to the island of Skorpios that he bought in 1962 [this was another thing Greek shipping magnates typically seemed to do: buy their own island]; on the 1967 overthrow of the Greek government by a military coup to save the country from communism, then shortly thereafter King Constantine attempted to take over and was then exiled to Italy with his mother Queen Frederika. "Since then Greece has been a military dictatorship." On battles between Onassis and Niarchos for government concessions: the Papadapoulos dictatorship wanted to industrialize and it called for investments in oil refineries, aluminum mills, power plants, various heavy industry. [It's interesting that Niarchos and Onassis were the two primary guys competing against each other, and this seems to be a story that happens a lot among captains of industry: see the book Meet You in Hell which discusses the angry, bitter "partnership" between Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie for example. Also re Onassis: even though he really began to back off on his risk level in shipping, he still seemed to want to keep growing and expanding into new industries, and in these other industries he had less context and competitive advantage. Maybe he really should have let Niarchos win! At this point, it doesn't matter, Onassis was already rich.]
166 "Let's get to what you've all been waiting for. Jackie and Ari." [Again, this author goes the extra mile to make her book readable and fun, and this reader thanks her!]
Chapter 14
167ff On the summer of 1963: Onassis knew Lee Radziwill, neé Lee Bouvier, Jackie's sister, who would later marry to Prince Stanislaus Radziwill of Poland. Jackie had been dispatched to Italy to indirectly work with the Vatican to get her sister permission to get marreid in a Catholic ceremony. Radziwill was the descendant of Polish kings who lost everything after the Russian Revolution and World War II; he became friends with Onassis and even dated Charlotte Niarchos, who was Stavros' daughter.
171 Jackie then went on a tour of Greece via Onassis's yacht while Kennedy was in the US; also a somewhat gruesome anecdote here: while Jackie was in Istanbul she was adored by the crowds there, and said "'I will return when my husband is no longer President.' as she was saying this, her husband was planning a trip to Dallas the following month."
171 Another tossed off anecdote here about Menderes who was the Premier of Turkey, he had also been a guest on Onassis' yacht briefly, but at this point he had been tried and executed for crimes including bribery and corruption; this sends the reader down yet another rabbit hole on the 1960 Turkish coup d'etat. 29 years later the Turkish government posthumously pardoned Menderes. And then just a few weeks after Jackie returns to the United States in November of 1963, JFK is assassinated in Dallas.
174 Beginning in the spring of 1968, some five years later, she began to be seen around Aristotle Onassis. "Jackie lost an earring that night and I dutifully recorded the search in my gossip column in the New York post."
177 [Sometimes you wonder if the author is delusional or just messing with her readers, or telling it straight. I suspect the latter.] "Once I had decided to become a gossip columnist, I had hoped to become the best of them all. To be a columnist you must be part detective, part seeress, part iron, and an extremely good listener with an excellent memory. I was all these and then some. In fact, my detective work during a particular drug and music business scandal had so impressed the then attorney General William P. Rogers that one night at a party he offered me a job to go to Russia as a spy." [The context here is to explain that she really did her homework and knew long before anyone else in the media that Jackie and Onassis would marry, see the next note.]
177ff On the fact then Doris Lilly's own paper, the New York Post, didn't have the courage to print an item that she had written connecting Onassis and Jackie Kennedy. She was disgusted that they didn't even give her a call, tell her anything, or discuss it at all--they just didn't run it. "Disgusted, I went on Merv Griffin show a few days later and said that Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis were getting married. Just like that." There were loud boos from the audience. [This was about six weeks before Onassis and Jackie actually got married, so she was right.] Shortly after she presented this information to one of her superiors at the New York Post she was told, "Impossible honey, forget it." Worse, about a month before his marriage to Jackie, Onassis actually reached out to the author's colleague and denied the whole thing, and then this colleague printed that denial in the Post. Also on Onassis breaking the news to Maria Callas that he wanted to marry Jackie Kennedy: "she [Callas] remained mysteriously silent."
179ff Also in early 1968 the Kennedy family had become aware of the relationship between Jackie and Onassis, Bobby Kennedy himself was horrified, not least because it would harm his chances for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. But then Bobby was assassinated in June 1968. And then in October 1968, Jackie and Onassis were married on the island of Skorpios. [The author has an interesting take on their relationship and what drove it:] "I believe that Jackie was attracted to Ari for other reasons. Although by our standards she was a rich woman and didn't go into her marriage empty-handed, to live the way she needs to live she was poor... She also has security of another kind. Jackie has always seemed to have been attracted to older men, possibly because you don't have to shoot them in the legs to keep them home at night. Jack Kennedy had an eye for the women. Ari does not chase women..."
Chapter 15
181 On daughter Caroline Kennedy being the most unhappy about the prospects of a new father in Alexander Onassis; Aristotle's son Alexander said, "I didn't need a stepmother, but my father needed a wife."
A visibly uneasy Caroline Kennedy with Mr. and Mrs. Aristotle Onassis.
182 Maria Callas said, "First I lost my weight, then I lost my voice, and now I've lost Onassis." Also on various people who wrote tell-all articles and books; see for example Jackie's personal secretary Mary Barelli Gallagher who wrote My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy, and then a beautiful turn of phrase from the author as she mentions fellow gossip writer Liz Smith, "choosing to remain apart from the slaughter," had prepared a book on Jacqueline but abandoned the product when Bobby Kennedy was shot.
183ff Comments here on various threats, threatening letters and death threats directed at Jackie's, how she has bodyguards, etc. Also various pages here on the extraordinary amount of money Jackie spends, the clothes, jewelry she spends money on, etc.
Part Two: Niarchos
Chapter 16
191ff "His parents came from Sparta, the gray, hilly country of inland Greece. He walks with the air of an aristocrat, is sensuous and as dangerous as a coiled snake. Women find him impossible to resist. He's one of the richest men in the world. But it wasn't always like that." Comments on his gigantic sailing yacht, the Creole, his innovations in ship financing, ship design, and in tankers; he served in the Greek navy during World War II and was decorated [suspiciously, as we'll see in Chapter 17], his "brisk change of feminine partners" and his four marriages, including to Henry Ford's daughter Charlotte, who he married when he was 56 and she was 24; he then returned to his third wife almost immediately. "But more about that later."
194ff On Spyros Niarchos, Stavros' father: growing up in the 1880s and 1890s hearing about other Greek boys who had gone to America to make their fortunes; in 1893 with a few drachmas each Spyros and his brother Paraskevas emigrated to the US, arriving to Philadelphia; they started a restaurant in Philadelphia with a third immigrant, which failed, then they went to Buffalo, New York, opening a restaurant on Main Street. It did well, and they expanded, adding an ice cream parlor. They were there when McKinley came to Buffalo and was assassinated, and Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office.
198 Spyros travels back to Sparta and marries Eugenia, the daughter of the Coumandaros family, also from Sparta; they were moderately successful middle-class grain merchants; their daughter was very beautiful and 20 years younger than Spyros. As the author puts it "Only very poor girls married men their own age, and Eugenia was not poor." The families approved of the match, and he takes her back to America; they have a girl, Maria, and the author once again does a good job foreshadowing here as she describes the fact of her being an American was later to be the crux of a multi-million dollar lawsuit brought by the US government against the baby girl's brother 50 years later. Eugenia persuaded Spyros to return to Greece and then Stavros, their son, was born in Athens, missing being born in American citizen by four months.
200 Spyros then provided the capital to build a flour mill in Piraeus, along with his brothers-in-law. Spyros provided the money, the brothers-in-law provided the experience. "Ten years later the brothers were to have the money and Spyros the experience."
200ff On the First Balkan war in 1912, where Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro allied against the Turks; the peace treaty in 1913 where Greece was awarded Crete, most of the Aegean islands, and her present Northern boundary west of Thrace. Also at the 1914 outbreak of World War I, the king of Greece was pro-German, as his wife was the Kaiser's sister, but Greece remained neutral. At this point the Coumandaros family (Spyros' brothers-in-law) sent some of the brothers to Athens, Argentina and New York to deal and grain, the family began bickering and became distrustful of each other to the point where one of the brothers actually wrote a book accusing his brothers of misdeeds--the book caused a sensation in Athens. Spyros was working on the flour factory, richer than he'd ever expected to be. "How could Spyros Niarchos know that forty years later his son would be ashamed of him?"
203 In 1923 when Stavros Niarchos was 14 years old, his father lost all his money: he had been speculating on the Athens stock market, lost everything, and needed to sell his interest in the flour mill to pay his debts; his wife and son would never forgive him and Spyros himself would never recover from this setback. Stavros had to leave private school and go to the local high school, Spyros' daughter had no money for finishing school or clothes, etc., his wife Eugenia was proud became permanently embittered, and it made a permanent imprint on the son "which nearly a billion dollars has still not erased."
204ff Stavros gets married, but the marriage lasted less than a month, then he takes a temporary job working for a shipping agency, learning a great deal about the shipping trade; he had expensive tastes but no family money or none of his own to satisfy them; also note this early savvy business move: he borrowed money to charter a fleet of trucks, then offered to transport grain for his uncles' flour mill. "At twenty he spoke perfect French and was a far better businessman than his father had ever been."
206ff He tries but fails to persuade his family to acquire their own ships to ship grain from Argentina to the family flower mill; he then ends up buying six second-hand British freighters in 1935 at $20,000 each; also these freighters start taking cargo from ports upriver from Buenos Aires where there weren't unions and loading fees were far lower. On the first voyage the ship made $10,000 profit--half the value of the ship; and this saved 35% on their costs. Note that the uncles only gave him a small percent of the enormous extra profits he helped them make.
208 Stavros works out a deal to buy 60% of one of the family's ships, then in 1939 he married yet again, the 20-year-old widow of a Greek diplomat, Melpolmene. Stavros had also massively overinsured his ship, sensing that a war was brewing, and then when Hitler overran Belgium and Holland his ship was sitting dockside loaded with sugar and was sunk. "Britain had not yet frozen war insurance funds" and the ship owners received a million dollars for a ship that cost them less than $60,000.
Chapter 17
210 Finding ships too expensive to buy, Stavros Niarcos instead bought... diamonds. They were selling at bargain prices, they were easily portable. Also comments here on Mussolini invading Greece in 1940 after easily defeating Albania, but the Greek army heroically fought the Italians to a standstill and Greece only fell after Germany came to Mussolini's aid in 1941. Niarchos and his wife got visas to go to the United States, and they went to New York. He then bought a Great Lakes ore carrier and another freighter converted into a tanker, during Lend-Lease he was shipping a cargo of gasoline to Britain, but it was sunk by a German U-Boat. Note however Stavros had insured the ship for market value and thus collected $900,000 insurance versus his $300,000 purchase price. "Ships and their cargoes were so much in demand that neutral shipowners could command rates that would have seemed out of sight two years before." The author gives an example here of a ship that earned one-third of its purchase price on just one voyage. [Once again, we can see that shipping does very, very well during wartime. Assuming you already have ships...]
214ff Anecdotes here about how Stavros bangs girls left and right; also that he didn't give a shit about having fancy offices: he took one rented room at 17 Battery Place for office space, but conducted most of his business at the bar of the St. Regis Hotel.
216ff Stavros volunteers for the Greek navy in the summer of 1942, but he ended being up appointed assistant to the Naval Attache to the Greek Embassy in Washington, DC; likely a filler/no-show type position since he hardly spent any time in DC. Eventually he did get a signed to a ship in the Greek navy, and then yet another ship, but in general he hardly spent any time on these ships at all; later he was promoted to Navy Intelligence, but the way the author frames this it essentially sounds like this is a good example of a wealthy guy who managed to dodge any direct exposure to wartime danger; he spent most of the war in New York.
221ff A brief discussion of one of Niarchos' three Panamanian registered ships that actually survived the war, the other two were sunk but compensated by insurance; the ship that made it, the Atlantic, was paid $40,000 a month by the US Maritime Commission, probably profiting at least $15,000 a month--and it was tax-free because Stavros Niarchos was not a US citizen! "It had not been a bad war for Stavros Niarchos." [See 81ff above for the exact same quote about Onassis.]
Chapter 18
225ff A bit of review here of what happened after World War I, where where rich shipowners made a ton of money during the war, but the ones who scaled up after the war, who had too much belief in post-war shipping, expanded at the wrong time and lost everything; this is exactly what happened to Stavros's wife's father. Also the author foreshadows a little bit of the story of Stavros Livanos [Livanos is the subject of the third part of this book], the largest Greek shipowner at the time, who lost half his fleet during World War II, and because he was scarred by the industry's experience after World War I, he battened down the hatches for yet another "expected" post-war shipping slump...that didn't actually happen.
226 "Of all the other Greeks there were only two who decided to expand full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes in an uncertain future. Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarcos." [A couple of ways to think about this: if you're still young and haven't made it big yet, you can roll the dice--you're still young enough to still make it. But if you're older and already rich (like Livanos) you don't want to put yourself in the position of having to get rich twice!]
227 At this point Niarchos only had two ships, one of which was half owned by Onassis, but he had two million dollars, most of which came from insurance payoffs, so he bought a fleet of old freighters, mortgaging everything. "His [Niarchos'] friends told him he'd ruin himself. Stavros Livanos, who believed he [Niarchos] had a brilliant future in shipping, considered his actions reckless. They would all have been right if the slump that most ship owners expected had happened. It didn't. American relief and reconstruction programs around the world required more tonnage than anyone had anticipated."
228ff A bit more review here and more texture on the US Maritime Commissions sale of the Liberty ships: these were slow-moving 10,000 tons ships that could be sold only to American nationals, but with the loophole that if they were sold to a friendly government those governments could pass them on to their own nationals. Thus Onassis convinced the Greek government to buy a hundred ships and the government then doled them out to various Greek shippers. It turns out that Onassis got none and Niarchos only got six of the 100. Onassis was understandably furious--it was his idea in the first place! The terms were very generous too: the price per ship was only $550,000, but terms were amazing, only $125,000 down and 20 years to pay off the rest. at low interest rates. This was also the beginning of the breakdown of the friendship between Onassis and Niarchos.
229 Another tossed-off comment from the author here that sends the reader down a rabbit hole: the author describes Onassis and Niarchos as "Like Luella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, both do the same thing and do it well." It turns out these are famous gossip columnists from the 1940s and 50s--these two women could make or break people's careers--and they had a friendship that devolved into a legendary feud.
231ff Interesting maneuver here by Niarchos to get access to post-war American T2 tankers: these were only available to American citizens or companies controlled by Americans, so he set up a company with his sister and another Greek friend who were American citizens, and he kept remaining 25% of the company. Then, they had the company lease these tankers to a Panamanian company (that happened to be controlled by Niarchos) at bargain prices; thus American "front company" didn't show any profits at the American corporation level, all the profits accrued to the Panamanian company on the other side of those leases. Then on to American politicians who got caught up in this as well: Congressman Joseph Casey and Secretary of State Edward Stetinius, who formed a syndicate to buy five T2 tankers of their own to lease to Niarchos as well. Congressman Casey was indicted but then granted immunity for testifying before the committee of investigation, and it was from his testimony that "Niarchos' intricate shipping maneuverings can be examined at close range. The beauty of it is that no one could say he actually did anything wrong or illegal. At least, they weren't able to prove it, so it's the same thing."
Chapter 19
233ff On Niarchos' first wife Melpomene: she was cultured, educated, preferred discussions of philosophy and literature to business, "her tastes were less amatory" than Niarchos, as the author puts it; she went through the paces of a leading Long Island hostess, she quarreled with her husband, she was bored by the shipping industry; she was clearly deeply in love with her ambitious husband and she wasn't jealous of his many, many women, but she deplored his lack of discretion. In reality he was jealous of her. [!] "Envy is an unpleasant part of the Greek character, but Stavros Niarchos was jealous of other shipowners who had more ships, jealous of the American millionaires who had more money, jealous of his possessions--and even though he didn't see much of her, he was jealous of his wife."
235ff On Stavros Livanos, the old experience dean of Greek shipping, with a net worth of some $200 million, everybody gossiped about what he was doing and any chance remark he made would be passed around the shipping fraternity; he considered both Onassis and Niarchos to be promising representative of the next generation of shipowners; at first he thought Niarchos was reckless as he built his fleet rapidly on credit, as Livanos built his fleet carefully with cash and was a man of caution and thrift. Also Livanos disapproved of Niarchos' military service [uh, or lack thereof] and his womanizing. When it came to Niarcho's military service "Greeks in the know were appalled." He was given medals that every other Greek who served in the navy felt he did not deserve, and "on occasion he actually wore them."
238 A short discription here of Scandinavian supermodel Selene Mahri, another one of Niarchos' girlfriends. [See photo below: one can't help but be sobered a bit by the fact that nobody remembers any of these people anymore, but in their day they were just as famous as any of the "famous" people today, people who our culture will forget too. Every generation creates and destroys models, celebrities, actors, etc. Once again, it's mournful somehow.]
240ff Stavros sets his eyes on marrying Eugenia Livanos, the same who turned down Onassis. He asks her to marry him subject to his divorce from Melpomene, but in Greek tradition she has him ask her father for permission and Livanos decides he needs time to think it over. Livanos also asks Onassis (who was already married to his other daughter) for his opinion, and Niarchos assumes Onassis stabbed him in the back here. Their "mutual animosity had grown stronger and was coming to the surface." Livanos ultimately gives his consent. [Man, what a soap opera.]
Chapter 20
245ff Niarchos married Eugenia Livanos as his third wife, less than a year after Onassis and sister Tina were married. Onassis wasn't there, officially because he wasn't feeling well, but more likely he was upset that the dowry for Eugenia was considerably more than his wife's. This marriage was also seen as a huge consolidation of shipping interests, but it actually wasn't the case: the brothers-in-law mostly competed against each other instead of banding together.
247ff More discussion of the innovations in maritime finance that Onassis and Niarchos pioneered: the idea of using long term flat rate time charters as collateral for boat finance [see chapter 8 for the mechanics of how this worked as Onassis did it]; the whole idea was all too foreign to Livanos, who though the level of debt involved was dangerous, and that flat rate time charters from majors like Standard Oil were "almost cowardly." [It isn't easy being old in a young man's game.]
250ff More differences between Niarchos and Onassis: Niarchos had savoir-faire, Onassis was coarse, Niarchos tipped huge, Onassis didn't, etc.
Chapter 21
252ff A sad anecdote here of Stavros Niarchos launching a new ship, as his father--who was not invited--wanders around on board. Someone on the ship's staff found him and when he learned it was the Niarchos' father, asked Stavros what to do. Stavros basically said to put him in a room and I'll get to him later.
255 "There is an old shipper's joke that the Panamanian flag offered four freedoms: freedom from taxes, freedom from unions, freedom from inspection, and freedom from responsibility." The author also teaches the reader that this Panama loophole originally came from the United States and Lend-Lease, where it encouraged shippers to flag their ships from Panama so that the supplies they were sending to Great Britain wouldn't "officially" come from the United States.
256 Some trivia here on world oil consumption: oil consumption rose 10% in 1948 and tanker charter rates went up 25% that year. [Note in the current era oil consumption tends to rise about 1% per year, partly because the "denominator" of oil used is a lot higher, and also because the developing world's use is offset by decreasing oil intensity in developed countries]. Niarchos uses this amazing year in shipping profits by pyramiding those profits into more shipbuilding contracts. [The shipping industry is interesting: you would consider it a "growthy cyclical" industry in those days, because the world was reindustrializing, thus the use of oil and of shipping to transport it mean you'd have different boom/bust characteristics compare to the much less growthy cyclicality of the tanker industry today.] Also fascinating to see both Niarchos and Onassis driving huge shipbuilding volume at British shipyards, then German shipyards, and then they pivoted to Dutch and Swedish shipyards, because none of these countries have large ship shipyards anymore! Most of the large shipbuilding is done in Korea or China, and to some extent Japan. Also comments here on the increasing one-upmanship between Niarchos and Onassis; comments on how they never followed the Greek tradition of "men who marry sisters should behave like brothers." The author says they behaved more like Cain and Abel.
257ff Now the author returns to the controversy over the corporation Niarchos set up to buy surplus T2 tanks after World War II; there was discussion among some of his shipping peers in the London Greek shipping community about what to do,; ship broker Spyros Skouras recommended that he go back to the US and work it out in good faith with the appropriate government agencies, which is more or less what he did, except that he had a supertanker under construction at Bethlehem Steel shipyard and was about to sign contracts for two more, but when he learned the Department of Justice had a sealed indictment waiting for him he immediately canceled those contracts. He also had his attorney work out a settlement with then-Attorney General Warren Burger to return 19 of the 20 vessels and pay $4 million in fines in return for the government dropping charges; also Niarcos set up a US company (similar to Onassis's trust that he had set up for his children) where he could actually keep most of the T2 ships, while he also ordered $30 million worth of ship construction in US shipyards. Later the US government sued him for not keeping the terms of the deal, and he didn't set foot on us soil for a number of years. Also Onassis was pissed about this settlement, saying that it was a complete surrender by the US government. [Lots of takeaways one could make here, but one major one is do not ever assume the US government will operate in good faith. I think everyone is seeing this now if we look at the US's modern "empire-style" geopolitics, the new "Donroe Doctrine, etc.]
262 [Sobering comment here on brothers-in-law]: "When two men are married to two sisters in Creamcheese, Nebraska, their rivalry usually confines itself to who has the largest color TV or who is first with the wall-to-wall carpeting. But these two men compete on a scale so massive that its scope is almost incomprehensible to us." A whole long list here of how Niarchos and Onassis competed: on who had the best el Greco, who had the biggest yacht, who was friends with the most important global royals, who had the hottest mistresses, etc. At the end of the day Niarchos was more of the gentleman and Onassis was more of the less well-bred bro-in-law; Niarchos was "to the manor born" while you'd see Onassis in a bar in some village near Athens joining in with a bunch of Greek sailors dancing the syrtaki, breaking dishes and glasses; Niarchos would never do this.
262 Note the blurb here about Eugenia Niarchos who went to New York in 1952 to have her son Philip. I guess even elites would want US citizenship under the right circumstances!
265 Again discussing when Onassis had locked up the Arab oil monopoly with Aramco, Niarchos complained just as much as the American oil companies did; also on how the shipping industry tends to be cruelly ironic: it seemed obvious that Niarchos would become the far wealthier shipping magnate of the two until Suez happened [!] and then the whole dynamic flipped because Niarchos had already locked his fleet in with long-term charters, while Onassis because the industry had boycotted him, had unchartered ships available that could be leased at way higher prices. [This could be a scene right out of The Shipping Man! What an unbelievably ironic industry.] Although interestingly Niarchos then declared force majeure on many of his ships, reneging on his fixed contracts, so also was able to cash in on the Suez boom as well.
Chapter 22
272ff Discussion of Niarchos' art collection, which was actually very tasteful [and quite honestly sounds inconceivable to a modern reader, knowing the modern economics of these types of paintings], starting with Renoir's The Two Sisters and El Greco's Pieta, also paintings by Gaugain, Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Goya, Matisse, Delacroix, Corot; "He is as shrewd about buying art as he is concerning his ships." The author also talks about Niarchos and his agents "stalking" important paintings for years. Also on other things he collects: tapestries, silverware, etc.
275ff Interesting discussion here of a lawsuit over 25 Sutton Place, which Niarchos had owned via a shell company; on how certain tenants, VIP-type people like the US ambassador to Spain, the chairman of the board of Paramount pictures, who lived there had had their rent raised after rent control was lifted on luxury apartments in New York City, so they sued (or more accurately, attempted to sue) Niarchos, because they couldn't even find how to serve him with papers; most likely Niarchos didn't even know about the summons himself; Niarchos ended up winning the lawsuit; [I think one take away here is to be so big and wealthy that the stuff that people might try to sue you over doesn't even move the needle, it doesn't even matter.]
276 On speculation about how much money Niarchose is worth today [meaning when the book was published in 1970]: the author says he probably doubled his money since the Suez crisis, meaning he was worth three quarters of a billion dollars; also note this quote. "It has been said that all Greek shipowners have four sets of books. One for the public; one for their partners and shareholders; one for themselves, which is committed to memory and destroyed immediately; and one for the tax collectors if it is impossible to avoid them completely."
276ff On the post-Suez slump in 1960: there were reports that Niarchos had signed contracts with the Soviet Union to transport Russian oil because Fidel Castro had seized the foreign-owned oil refineries in Cuba, but could no longer get oil from the United States, thus he was dependent on Russian oil; in reality, however, despite criticism that Niarchos was "supporting Castro," he was working with the US Department of State and excluded Cuban deliveries in the Soviet contract; the author also mentions that American oil companies transported "communist oil" as well, even during the Vietnam war, so there was plenty of hypocrisy to go around everywhere.
279 "A big shot British businessman describes his [Niarchos'] routine aboard the Creole in this fashion. 'Stavros sits on deck in slacks and T-shirt chit-chatting with his friends. Then, on some out of the way Greek island, a man in a dark suit with a large briefcase comes on board and we don't see our host for the next day or so.'"
279 Comments how in his companies Niarchos chose brilliant executives and left them alone [whenever there's any fawning biography of any business leader, there is rarely any assessment or discussion of that leader's abilities to pick other leaders, to pick the right lieutenants. This, along with a talent for capital allocation, is the master skill in business]; also comments here on Niarchos' conflicts with US tax collectors; the author says, "But the difference is that when Uncle Sam tells us to pay, we pay or else. With him, there are always valid arguments." [This gets of course to the Sovereign Individual/Perpetual Traveler concept of wealth, where you either are wealthy enough to negotiate tax arrangements with nation states directly, or you have the ability to move your wealth (or your person) to a friendlier jurisdiction; either way you have to have to have some form of leverage. Of course you happen to be one of the largest shipowners in the world... you have leverage.] Note also after his conflict with the US government Niarchos refused to begin his ship construction in the US unless the Maritime Commission provided financing and mortgage insurance.
Chapter 23
284 On Niarchos' [extremely brief] marriage to the great-granddaughter of Henry Ford. "During what can be certainly called the most bizarre period of his personal life, Stavros Niarchos was the son-in-law of Henry Ford II for fourteen months." Note the beautiful three-paragraph summary here of the Henry Ford dynasty here on page 284-5! [Also for more on the Fords, see Peter Collier and David Horowitz's book The Fords: An American Epic.] Charlotte Ford was the daughter of young Henry, who was Edsel's son and Henry's grandson. Also on young Henry and his divorce and then remarriage to Christina Vettore Austin, the Italian socialite. On various comments Charlotte and Niarchos made about each other when they first met: Stavros considered her "the cheapest thing I ever saw" and she said he was "a bloody bore and a dirty old man." [Interesting... I guess.] Note also Charlotte was already rich in her own right with part of the Ford fortune, so she knew that Niarchos wasn't after her money. Note that Niarchos was 32 years older than Charlote and eight years older than Charlotte's own father, and he was her father's friend. "It was like something out of a Henry James novel, where the innocent young American girl is confused and awed by the decadent and weary sophistication of an older and much more glamorous society."
290 [This part of the story is hard to believe but...] Years earlier Charlotte had confessed to her father that she was in love with Niarchos, but Henry persuaded her out of it, but now she really meant it, and this time, so the whole family flew to London to see Niarchos: everyone was there, including Charlotte's mother and Niarchos' wife Eugenia, who had agreed to get a divorce. Also, incredibly, Eugenia and her two children even accompanied the newlyweds during their Saint Moritz honeymoon. [!] The author writes, "I am not easily shocked.. Despite all my years of covering the International Society scene, however, I still have difficulty finding the right words to describe this honeymoon. I know it happened, but I don't believe it." The author goes on to describe how the bride and groom were in the bridal suite at The Palace Hotel in Saint Moritz, but Niarchos spent most of his time with Eugenia and the children. Years later, when Charlotte heard that Jackie Kennedy was going to marry Aristotle Onassis, she said "I hope she is treated well; I was married to a Greek and I know how it is." Five months later Charlotte gave birth to a girl. The author also writes, "As if someone had waved a magic wand, Niarchos' difficulties with US government had been settled just before the birth of his daughter making him free to fly to New York to see his wife and child and presumably confer with the Ford attorneys about a settlement." [Wow. I never knew anything about this Ford family side-story.]
292 "The night after his daughter's wedding, Henry Ford was asked what he thought of his new Greek son-in-law. His reply will remain among my souvenirs as long as I live. 'He is a very nice man,' said Henry." They were divorced soon after; also for months after the divorce Niarchos called her constantly. The author writes, "...if the marriage didn't work, the divorce was the success."
294ff [And holy cow here's a hard to believe anecdote...] Henry Ford was a republican but left the Republican party to become a staunch supporter of Lyndon Johnson; he brought a lot of the American business community along with him, he was a heavy contributor to his campaign, etc. The author says that a well-placed source in Washington said that Henry confided to LBJ that his daughter was in love with a married man and had a "problem," and when the president was informed who it was "he got word to Niarchos that if he refused to make an honest woman of his friend's daughter, all the awesome power of the American presidency would be brought to bear on the Greek shipowner." Also comments here and how Niarchos' stock among other Greek shipowners "fell like a stone" because how we treated his wife Eugenia: this was no way to treat the daughter of Stavros Livanos. The author quotes "a patriarch of the American Greeks": "'how could he do a thing like that to a fine girl like Eugenia? And the worst thing about it is that he was Henry's friend.'"
Chapter 24
296ff On supertankers in this era reaching 250,000 tons in capacity, also on the fact that, surprisingly, rates did not jump with America's involvement in Vietnam like during the Korean War; Niarchos toyed with selling his fleet and getting out of the tanker business; there was a group that offered to buy him out and he came close to accepting; on the fact that both Onassis and Niarchos had also diversified away from shipping by this time; Onassis bought control of a Swiss bank in Geneva, Niarchose bought up some of Columbia Picture's stock and became a large landowner in Marrakesh; both owned shipyards, lots of real estate, Onassis started Olympus Airways in Greece, etc.
299ff On both Niarchos' and Onassis' dealings with the Greek government after the military coup in 1967; both of them bidding for aluminum plants various other concessions oil refineries and other industrial investments, all this was happening around when this book was being written.
Part Three: Livanos
[This is the thinnest and poorest of the four parts of the book. It repeats elements of the Niarchos and Onassis sections of the book, so the review is useful, but this part of the book seems like a minor appendix compared to Parts One and Two, the real meat of the book.]
Chapter 25
305ff On Stavros Livanos' grandfather's upbringing on the island of Chios, the birth of his son George Stavros Livanos, named George for his grandfather and Stavros for his father; and then his son, named Stavros George Livanos, and his son ultimately would be named George Stavros Livanos; on the poverty of George Livanos' [Stavros' father's] upbringing, on how he watched Greek sailors in the 1860s who had a bleak life; on his first job as a cabin boy; on how his aunt, once she learned about how cruel his stepmother was, took him to live with her and her son; on how he married Eugenia Tsakos, the daughter of one of the wealthier men of the island of Chios.
307 A discussion of the Greek word polymetis, which basically means "resourcefulness" and refers to the wily and cunning Greek style of doing business.
307ff Livanos' father and his father went in on buying a ship together, the Caesar, a 100-ton cargo ship, but then in 1878 a big storm sank the ship; there was no insurance in those days. But Livanos' father had saved enough money to buy yet another ship, and this time he owned three quarters of it instead of only half.
310 On Turkish control of the island of Chios as well as various other parts of the region; also some funny comments here about how Turks were the world's worst sailors, and a story about how a Turkish admiral had been sent to attack the island of Malta, but couldn't find it, so he just said that there was no such place. Also on the Greek War of Independence in 1821, rising up against Muslim Turks, in this conflict the Greek sailors and navy were decisive; but when the Turks eventually put down the insurrection Chios remained a Turkish island. Comments here on the production of mastic, a type of tree that produces a sap that could be worked into an early form of chewing gum; also these trees produced mastika an alcoholic beverage; also when the Chios Greeks revolted along with the rest of Greece in 1821, the Turks viciously massacred thousands of Greeks, including every prominent Greek on the island; five years later in 1832, Greece was declared independent under the protection of Britain, France and Russia, with a hand-picked German prince for a king; the Greeks were understandably upset about this, and then they rose up again; in 1863 they chose their own King, King George I.
314ff George Stavros Livanos had four sons and a daughter: Michael, John, Stavros, Nicholas and Maria. Stavros was born in 1890. And then finally an anecdote about how father George Livanos was determined to buy a steamship, as they were quickly replacing sail-powered ships.
Chapter 26
316ff [Stavros' Father] George Livanos gets his steamer just after the turn of the century: a 10-year-old ship needing some work, a second-hand $2,800-ton British steamer. But then it turns out in 1906 this ship sank in a storm too; again Livanos and his crew all survived--and there was of course still no insurance here either. But yet again because he had saved his money, he was able to buy yet another ship with the help of some additional capital from a wealthy Russian businessman "who was impressed with Captain George's ability." Backstory here on how the Russians had to depend on the Greeks for the Black Sea trade, how Russians weren't really much better sailors than the Turks, so Greek ships would transport grain from the port of Odessa to the rest of the world.
318ff Now on to Stavros, George's third son: at 17 he studied engineering, and at 19 got his license to become the youngest chief engineer in the Greek merchant navy.
320ff On 1912 and the First Balkan War, where Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro joined the Italians (who were already at war with Turkey) "for a slice of the disintegrating Turkish Empire." Stavros joined the Greek navy and served until the end of the war; two years later Turkey lost and Chios was awarded to Greece; the family had two steamers working full-time for Greece's ally, Italy. Note that this conflict got very very complicated: the First and Second Balkan Wars involved Serbia wanting a larger chunk of Macedonia from Bulgaria, and Serbia also wanted a "great big chunk" of the New Kingdom of Albania which was created by 1913 Treaty of London; and then Bulgaria attacked the Serbs and Greeks in Macedonia, and then was in turn attacked by Romania and Turkey.
321ff Comments here on the low cost structure of Greek shipping; on their low-quality ships, their underpaid sailors, as well as their knack for cheating insurance companies, or even unloading a cargo secretly before a ship "went down" to claim the insurance. Also comments here on Livanos' legendary thrift. After the Second Balkan War the family bought several other steamers. And then shipping rates rose astronomically with the outbreak of World War I. The family then opened a London office and sent Stavros there to operate it; he was 25.
325ff On how the Livanos family tended to fund everything with cash, so when the post-war shipping boom collapsed in 1923, they owned their ships outright and were able to buy more ships in the years to follow. The family's father Captain George died in 1926 at 78. Finally Stavros meets Erieta Zafirakis, who he marries, he was 35 and she was 15.
Chapter 27
328ff Anecdotes about how Livanos would use his own freighters to travel whenever he could: he liked to go to sea, he liked to talk to the captains and engineers, and--not least--it saved money. The family never owned a yacht and there was no commercial plane travel yet. Then in 1927 they had a baby girl Eugenia [she would go on to marry Stavros Niarchos]; then the stock market crash in 1929; and by 1932 the shipping industry really fell apart; but Livanos, as usual, had cash.
331 "The going rate for an able-bodied seaman on a Greek ship then was one pound, ten shillings a month. Less than seven dollars and fifty cents in American money. Even at that, there was little work and Livanos' ships paid even less. The captains of his ships got only twenty pounds a month which was not even one hundred dollars."
332 Stavros' second daughter Athina is born. [She would go on to marry Onassis.]
333ff On the Livanos family being well-regarded among the London Greek society; how they were staid, old-fashioned and deeply religious. As the Depression started to improve Livanos was becoming one of the richest men in the world, although the daughters weren't told this: they were just taught the value of thrift and to avoid foolishly squandering money. And then the family had a son: George Stavros Livanos.
335 Shipping rates skyrocketed as the Second World War began, as England and France were in desperate need of shipping tonnage and Livanos had more than seven brand new ships ready to go that he had built during the Depression at rock-bottom prices. In 1940 Livanos moves his family to Canada to live in Montreal.
337ff When Italy attacks Greece, and after Germany finishes the job and conquers Greece, Livanos learns that his three brothers were all arrested for resistance activity. After Pearl Harbor was attacked Livanos moves his family to New York. [Interesting here that he had his office at 24 Stone Street!]
339 On daughter Athina being thrown from a horse when she was 14 in 1943; on Aristotle Onassis meeting her around then (he would marry here some three years later); also interesting comments about how the Livanos daughters were becoming Americanized: they thought little of the traditional Greek way of marring someone so much older. And when Aristotle proposed and wrote a formal letter to Livanos asking for his daughter's hand in the old Greek tradition, Livanos hit the roof: first because it was Onassis working his charm behind his back, but second that it was his younger daughter who wanted to marry first. At first he refused to speak to Aristotle, but his wife reminded him that there was a similar difference in their ages when they were married too. So eventually Livanos "cooled down and accepted the idea." "To the Greeks, this was a Rockefeller marrying a Mellon and they pulled out all the stops."
Chapter 28
344ff On young George, Tina and Eugenia's younger brother; more stories about Livanos' legendary frugality; he was extremely well liked; on his friendship with J. Paul Getty, who made a home in England for many years; Getty, also frugal, famously kept a pay telephone in his British castle for his guests' use. [!] Also on how Livanos and his wife were scandalized when Tina divorced Onassis. "Livanos was of the older Greek school and could understand a man's occasional misstep after a few visits to a waterfront bar. But to flaunt an opera singer in his daughter's face outraged him."
347ff 1963 Stavros Livanos dies of a heart attack in Lausanne; he was 73. Details repeated here on how Niarchos divorced his daughter Eugenia after he died, but then she took him back (although didn't remarry him) after he married and then divorced Charlotte Ford.
350 On Tina's remarriage to Sonny, the Marchioness of Blandford, and the son of the Duke of Marlborough; some anecdotes here about his relation to Winston Churchill, who was Sonny's great uncle; he was also a great-great-grandson of the old Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the Vanderbilt money repaired the Blenheim Palace property that Sonny and Tina would live in. Also a funny anecdote about Tina inheriting her father's frugality: Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill asked Tina if she could put a little of Tina's suntan oil on her face, but then when she tried to put more on her shoulders Tina said "That cost twenty-five dollars a bottle you know, don't waste it." The author writes, "I guess when you're that rich, twenty-five dollars means a lot."
351 [Also a memorable and self-effacing quote from the author here that really shows that there are levels to things: there's a big difference between the elite and a gossip colonist who roams among the elite.] "I only met the present Marchioness of Blandford [Tina] once. It was at a party given by Afdera Fonda, the former wife of actor Henry Fonda, for our mutual friend Count Giovanni Volpi who was visiting New York from Rome. Knowing Giovanni and I were great friends, Afdera had asked me to stay until the end and we'd all go on to dinner. The party dragged on but I sat it out, waiting for my hostess to tell me we were leaving. I didn't have to wait long. Unintentionally, I caught the sharp eye of Tina from across the room, who said in a loud stage whisper, 'I wish everyone [meaning me] would leave, so that we [meaning her] could go on to dinner.' Coward that I am, I left. But the sting stayed with me all the way home."
351 Comments here about how the Onassis children were disturbed by their father's remarriage to Jackie Kennedy. "Obliged to attend their father's wedding, both children wept quite openly and refused to join in a toast. At this writing at least, Christina Onassis seems to have come around." Then comments about Alexander Onassis and his playboy lifestyle. [Note that Alexander died in a plane crash just a few years after this book was published; Alexander's mother, Tina, died of a likely barbiturate overdose a year later, in 1974. Worse, Tina's and Aristotle's daughter Christina Onassis was found dead in her bathtub at age 37 in 1988 under what seemed to be suspicious circumstances. And it gets worse: Tina's sister Eugenia died of a barbiturate overdose in 1970.]
Part Four: The Other Greeks
Chapter 29 [This chapter is just a survey of a bunch of other families in the Greek shipping world.]
355ff The Greek shipowners are a small group of 40 families with more power than entire countries, "...they resemble in structure the great German-Jewish families that populate Wall Street that were so brilliantly described in Stephen Birmingham's Our Crowd."
356 On Stavros Livanos never giving an interview in his life; he never talked to any reporter ever, and rarely confided even to his own family; the author talks about how it's almost impossible to learn about any of these people, because even the Greeks won't talk about them; most Greek shipowners shun publicity, unlike Niarcho and Onassis who ardently courted the press from time to time. "Publicity draws attention. Attention draws tax collectors."
357 "The following are the major Greek ship owning families. Where possible I have given an estimate of their wealth in money, in ships, or in tons."
357ff Costa Lemos, nicknamed "Goldfinger," is actually richer than Onassis or Niarchos; see also his innovations in the so-called liquid-dry bulk carrier that can unload oil and take on a cargo of wheat.
The Goulandris family: this family, with two branches is worth well over a billion dollars as well.
The Nomikos family: estimated fortune $500 million.
The Pateras family: nobody knows how much they're worth; this is a conservative old line London Greek family.
The Embiricos family: also part of the Greek shipping aristocracy; they controlled one half of the entire Greek merchant fleet during World War I, which they chartered over to the Allies, this family is worth over a billion dollars.
The Lykiardopoulos family: the other has no idea how wealthy this "extremely wealthy" family is.
The Stathatos and Lyras families: socially prominent in London with a fleet of over a million tons.
John C. Carras: a million tons.
Minos Colocotronis: a young bright new star in the Greek shipping world, a million-ton fleet.
Nicholas Papalios: 39 ships, although not well respected because of his specialization trading with Red China and Castro Cuba.
Menaas Karaeorgis: 36 years old, attractive, and a fleet of 600,000 tons.
The Callimanopoulos family: operates Hellenic lines and lives mostly in Athens.
The Vergottis family: a London and New York family.
The Rethymnis and Kulukundis families: "kingpins of Greek shipping during the interwar period."
The Negroponte family: one of the oldest shipping families in Greek shipping, this family started making money under the czars in Russia.
The Coulouthros family: a fleet of over 15 ships, part of the Embiricos family.
The Frangos family: family with a small fleet from the island of Chios.
The Hadjilias family: five tankers and freighters, connected to the Kulukundis family.
The Hadjipateras family: ten ships.
John Latsis: twenty tankers.
The Xylos family: twelve tankers.
The Mavroleon family: twelve tankers, connected to the Kulukundis family.
The Fafalios family: from Chios, twelve ships.
A.G. Tsavliris: forty tugs and freighters.
The Apadiakos family: thirty ships.
The Dracoulis family: another old and respected shipping family.
John Vatis: half a million tons.
363ff "Greek Shipland is small. There are only those forty or so families I've told you about and the total population is not much over a thousand. But it is the richest little nation in the long history of the world. It is inbred, parochial, and generally intermarries within itself. It is infinitely more interested in what the other members of Shipland think than in public opinion. What matters to them, really, is how they rate with each other and the Orthodox priest on their island back home." [Once again, this author has a nice turn of phrase.]
To Read:
Willi Frischauer: Onassis
Doris Lilly: How to Meet a Millionaire
Doris Lilly: How to Make Love in Five Languages
Veronica Lake: Veronica
Stephen Birmingham: Our Crowd
William J. Miller: The Ottoman Empire and Its Successors, 1801-1927
Reginald Rankin: The Inner History of the Balkan Wars