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On the other hand, tankers as big as 100,000 tons may prove a strategic necessity. Many tankermen have been expecting for months that Egypt's General Nasser would not only seize the Suez Canal (see FOREIGN NEWS), but bar it to Western shipping, to bring pressure on Britain and the U.S. Some supertankers are now bypassing the Canal on the Middle East-California run. If all Europe-and U.S.-bound tankers are forced to round the Cape of Good Hope, more and bigger supertankers will be needed.
Atomic Ship. The shipping industry is already responding to the supertanker success formula: the bigger and faster the ship, the fatter the profit. Aided by the biggest shipping subsidies in peacetime history, long-hungry U.S. shipyards are taking on more and more supership orders, and expect volume to increase. The Maritime Administration estimates that "block obsolescence" of war-built U.S.
merchantmen will soon force shipowners to replace 200 of 1,062 ships sailing under the U.S. flag, spend $1.5 billion for new tonnage in U.S. yards by 1971, v. $500 million since 1946. Moore-McCormack Lines, Grace Line and American President Lines have already announced plans to build 83 new ships for a total of $874 million.
No shipowner keeps a closer watch on tomorrow than Stavros Niarchos. He is building four dry cargo ships against the day, some five years hence, when the last wartime freighters start vanishing from the seas. He is exploring the possibility of roll-on, roll-off ships, and has already ordered his first bulk carriers in Sweden. He is so impressed with the benefits of an atomic-powered ship that he recently told an aide: "Let's build one now!" The staffer finally convinced him that he was looking too far ahead.
Despite his millions, Niarchos still remains a modest man. "People ask me," says he, " 'If your brother-in-law is worth $150 million, what are you worth?' I say. 'Maybe minus $150 million.' You can never tell what ships are worth. Why someday I may even have to sell the whole fleet for scrap iron." Few shipping men think that day will ever come—or, if it does, that Niarchos will lose money on the deal.
* Deadweight tonnage, the standard U.S. yardstick for merchant ships, is the number of long tons (2,240 Ibs.) a ship can carry when fully loaded. Other ways of sizing up a ship: displacement tonnage, internationally used to measure naval vessels, is figured by computing the weight of sea water (35 cu. ft. weighs one long ton) a ship displaces when loaded: gross registered tonnage, usually used to measure passenger liners, is a nautical monstrosity, arrived at by computing the total enclosed space on the ship in cubic feet and dividing by 100 to get the tonnage. One deadweight ton equals approximately 1.5 gross tons for most ships.
* U.S. oil companies also operate the bulk of their international fleets under foreign flags, but cannot bring home the profits without paying U.S. corporation taxes. In 1939 the U.S. Government actually encouraged shipping companies to register their fleets in neutral Panama, thus kept vital supplies flowing to Britain without violating U.S. neutrality.