Since the Torrey Canyon disaster in 1967, the world's ever bigger oil tankers have drawn worse and worse publicity. Viewers with alarm see them as oil-leaking time bombs that defile the seas with toxic black goo. Tankermen have a different perspective. Sailing calmly through gales of criticism, they supply the key fuel that powers modern nations and without which great cities would be ghost towns. To examine that perspective, TIME's Paris Bureau Chief William Rademaekers signed aboard the brand-new Esso of The Netherlands tanker Europoort for a five-day cruise from the Canary Islands to Milford Haven, Wales. His report:
"At 1,141 ft., 15/16ths of an inch," my press kit told me, "the Europoort is the world's longest ship—85 ft. longer than the Eiffel Tower." When I first saw her, she looked like a horizontal Empire State Building, filled with enough Arabian crude oil (243,000 tons) to power all of France for one day. I called her a supertanker, but a bearded Dutch officer objected. "Those are small ships, in the 100,000-ton class," he declared. "This one is 253,000 tons, so it's a VLCC, a very large cargo carrier. All clear?"
By any name, the Europoort is a luxury liner. Her Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese crewmen each have private cabins with private portholes. Officers have double beds, most of them equipped with wives. Since tankers are not allowed to carry passengers, the wives sign on as "stewardesses." Esso draws the line for bachelor officers: they occupy their double beds alone. But in every other respect, the company pampers its men. The ship boasts two comfortable recreation rooms, twice-a-week movies, a well-equipped photographic darkroom, a galley for late snacks, ample Dutch gin-and 12,000 bottles of Heineken's beer for each two-month round trip between apathy (the Persian Gulf) and tedium (Milford Haven). For overfed crewmen, Esso also provides a small swimming pool, a gymnasium and a nonskid jogging track around the ship's four-acre deck.
Because automation has cut the crew requirements on new VLCCs to as few as 30 men (future ships may have only nine), modern tanker life produces a weird sense of isolation. The Europoort seemed to glide through the Atlantic like the Mary Deare, a ghost ship in search of a port. That's why I looked forward to meals so much. It was reassuring to see the officers there—all there. But that in turn led to the sinking question of who was driving. The answer was the automatic pilot, automatic radar, automatic steering adjuster. "We stay in our staterooms," said one officer. "This ship runs itself, and when something goes wrong, it's too damned complicated to fix anyway. Have a beer?"