Just before the millennium, prospects for Greek-owned shipping looked grim for the first time after many years of almost uninterrupted – and always impressive – expansion. The age of Greek-owned ships coupled with its heavy specialisation in ship types that found themselves in a sea of regulatory changes seemed as a combination of challenges that Greek shipping would not be able to handle this time. Yet, the legendary flexibility and market “feel” of the Greek-shipping community led to the Greek-owned fleet not only transiting successfully into the 21st century at the leading position in world shipping hierarchy, but also building solidly on its existing strengths while venturing into new areas. This chapter reviews this course focusing on changes in the specialisation and age of the Greek-owned fleet.

The historiography referring to the first two centuries of Greek merchant shipping is obviously inferior to that for subsequent centuries. Generally speaking, it consists of a few studies of local or topical character, in which there is an evident lack of comparative approach and, finally, a broader perspective. The very few reliable attempts at a synthetic presentation of the phenomenon are betrayed, inter alia, by the absence of data that are based on systematic archival research. The problem is not only qualitative but also primarily quantitative. We are not deprived so much of information on the more general context as of information of statistical type, capable of supporting credible interpretations. The present article does not of course aspire to cover the lacunae in the historiography on Greek merchant shipping. That would demand systematic work and collaboration of several researchers. Our aims are merely a) to present the main phases and trends in the relevant historiography, b) to make a critical assessment of the proceedings and, concurrently, c) to point out the lacunae in the historiography.

"The Greek case provides a unique paradigm of maritime transport and is among those worthy of a closer examination. Surprisingly, a systematic review of the various facets of Greek maritime transport has been unavailable in the international literature. This book aims to fill some of the gaps in the international literature of maritime transport studies as regards this unique paradigm.This volume provides an analysis of the ways that the Greek paradigm of maritime transport developed and continues to evolve and adjust. The extensive range of topics covered includes shipping ownership, management and organization, shipping finance, supply chains approaches of shipping, employment at sea, coastal shipping, maritime transport and intermodalism, port strategy developments, digital maritime transport, and maritime tourism. The contributed chapters examine a variety of the economic, management and policy parameters that have resulted in the various unique successes and the easiness of several maritime sectors to remain competitive. They also explore in detail those parameters that explain the observed failures and difficulties observed in several other markets of maritime transport, and assess the several systemic opportunities available to be grasped. This systemic approach endorsed in this volume allows drawing integrated conclusions for the sources of successes of, the problems involved with, and the pressures exercised on, maritime transport systems. Also available via: www.sciencedirect.com"

Between the middle of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries shipping became a major economic activity for many Ionian and Aegean communities. The growth of the merchant marine of the Ionians and Aegean Greeks under both Venetian and Ottoman sovereignty, and that of the kingdom of Greece after 1830, are examined in relation to shipping developments. A key element of this study is the analysis of the ship types that were employed by Greek shipowners over the period. The evolution of ship types helps us to understand the technical upgrade of the Greek merchant fleets and in parallel with their economic growth, their expansion to new routes and their specialization on certain trades and markets. As they made the transition from purely Mediterranean ship types to those influenced by those of western and northern Europe, seafarers improved the performance of their business and gathered important technical know-how. As a result they steadily integrated with the wider international maritime economy.

Aristotle Onassis was a leading figure in paving the way in the new global tanker business in the second half of the twentieth century. This paper examines the first thirty years of his career, before he became world-wide known. Setting his business in the context of developments in world shipping, this paper examines the entrepreneurship of Onassis during the economic crisis of the 1930s, World War II, the late 1940s and the first years of the Cold War in the early 1950s which marked his conflict with the American government. Onassis is the most famous of the shipping tycoons that transformed maritime business in the post-World War II transitional period. He is among those shipowners that replaced the old "order" of the traditional British shipowners of the British Empire to the "new men" -Greeks, Norwegians, Danish, Americans, Japanese or those of Hong Kong- who established global shipping business in the era of United States dominance.

This chapter examines how Greek shipowners combined their entrepreneurial skills with American finance and European maritime expertise to become the world’s leading shipowners in the post-war period. Led by Aristotle Onassis, they were able to exploit opportunities in the United States in the 1940s and led the way in tanker shipping in post-WWII Europe. Greek shipowners created and consolidated the new institution of the global shipping company, paving the way for today’s ‘stateless’ maritime industry. The chapter analyzes the growth of the oil market and tanker shipbuilding by following the activities of one of the leaders of Greek and world tanker shipping, Aristotle Onassis, during the period 1948–1954. In the second part, we examine tanker shipbuilding by the Greeks, in particular by Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos, in German shipyards. Today, Greece is the leading country in terms of ownership of the world fleet, and this chapter shows how this became possible.

This chapter analyses the reasons that have led to eternal difficulties in developing an efficient and effective Greek coastal shipping system. Being crucial for the national cohesion, the effectiveness of coastal shipping services has been an issue of major importance that has captured the interest of both the Greek state and its citizens. The analysis focuses on the interplay of oligopolistic market features and ineffective state policies that has resulted in an unstable coastal market and has undermined the quality of the supplied shipping services. In particular, it discusses the role of an intervening state in shaping the market (i.e. by controlling entry, fares, safety rules and intervening in routes, manning and duration of employment). It also examines the main economic features of the coastal shipping market, which are those of a regulated oligopoly (i.e. a large number of individual users who express a flexible, heavy seasonal, steadily increasing demand; asymmetric information, mainly due to managerial, training and research deficit; the absence of auditing, high institutional and economic barriers to entry; limited mobility of coastal companies and indivisibilities). Then the chapter focuses on the essential characteristics that a passenger transportation network with a strong public interest has to fulfil (i.e. system accessibility, affordability, safety/security, quality requirements, etc.) and the limited extent to which these criteria have been applied as pre-conditions for developing a modern and efficient Greek coastal shipping. The emphasis is on the absence of a systemic approach that would take into account all the constituent parts of the coastal transport (network, market monitoring, auditing, ships, ports, infrastructure, stakeholders, etc.) and would act as the driving force towards the modernization of the coastal shipping services.

The international shipping industry, and especially the bulk sector, has experienced the effects of numerous changes during the last three decades. It is not an exaggeration to state that one of the very few things that remained stable all these years is the leading position of Greek-owned fleet. Greeks own almost 17% of the world tonnage and rank at the top of the world maritime hierarchy. This chapter aims at examining the factors that have contributed to this success focusing on the internal environment of the companies by analyzing their resources and capabilities as well as their structural characteristics which created the conditions for their internal integration and the creation of a sustainable competitive advantage.