“He killed only blue whales today, it has to be a secret,” Bruno
Schilaghecke wrote in his diary. He was a German sailor on board the
Olympic Challenger Whaler, the flag-ship of Lars Andersen’s fleet,
the best whalers in the world. The adventure of the whaler had been
ordained to fail by both the captain and the ship owner. The project
“whaler” was born under such circumstances, as the usual Colombo’s
egg that resolves all such difficult situations.
When it became difficult to build ships in the United States, Ari
went to Hamburg, Germany, where before the war he had ordered his
super oil tankers to examine the situation of the Hamburg shipyards.
The German economy readily received the ordering of ships, but the
Potsdam Accords limited ships built to 115 tons.
Ari was disappointed, but Kostas Gratsos came through with a
loophole. In the Potsdam Accords, it was written that Germany could
enlarge its fleet of whalers, which created an empty space in a
profitable market. But there was something else; it was not
prohibited in German shipyards to convert preexisting ships. The
connection was obvious. The oil tanker T2 Herman Whiton quickly
became the largest whaler in the world, while The Olympic Challenger
passed through 17 Canadian and British corvettes that formed a convoy
to cross the Atlantic. The corvettes were naturally designed for
hunting.
This started a new challenge for Onassis, a challenge far different
from others, for Ari now knew how to play with loaded dice. He knew
he had chosen a captain who was a Norwegian that had collaborated
with the Nazis. Through this man, he enlisted 14 Norwegian
artillerymen, including Lars Andersen, experienced in whale
butchering. With a crew that had these qualifications, there was
no problem passing the ship off as a whaler.
Given the scruples of a team of this type relative to the respect
for international rules, the safeguard for the survival of the
species - limiting whale captures to 16 thousand a year - was pure
illusion.
The Olympic Challenger began harpooning whales a month prior to the
opening of the season and did not distinguish between little
sperm-whales and whales that were still just forming. Pieces of meat
from the 124 dead whales lay still on the ship’s deck. No one was at
all grown up about it. Without any sensibility, they killed everything
under the gun. These are the words of Bruno Schlaghecke, from the
international commission for the hunting of whales, which bring forth
his decisive evidence in the action against the Onassis fleet.
In Ari’s opinion, the whales were there for the sole purpose of being
captured. The only rule he knew in business was the prificts etic and
that the price of whale’s oil rises uncommonly fast. There surely
existed another component to his fury, above the logic of gain. It is
here that we find his instincts as a hunter, the enjoyment of
capturing and destroying his prey. The first shipment produced
4,200.00 dollars and the massacre continued undisturbed for another
3 years until 1954.
That was a year of risk for the whalers. With the arctic zone now
exhausted, the whalers moved along Peru’s coast where an absurd
limit was posed: In his territorial waters, where he exercised a
fool military and administrative sovereignty, he moved within 200
miles of the coast. The actual limit was about 405 miles. The United
States, United Kingdom, and Norway, the biggest producers of whale
oil, protested and even without a written document, it seemed that
Peru would not defend the imposed limit.
Onassis’ fleet was navigating towards Peru, hardly exceeding the
Panama canal, when the Peruvian newspaper organized an alarmist press
campaign against his whalers. Acting with prudence this time, Onassis
decided to stay out and ordered the captain to keep his ship to the
limit of 200 miles. By now, he had already accumulated 60 thousand
barrels of oil and captured 580 whales in the Arctic zone. On
November 15, convinced by second-hand information that Onassis’
ships had crossed the limit, sent an ambassador to intimidate the
flag-ship and invited it to head for Lima. Instead, the ship
continued on the sea and was fired upon by machine guns and bombed.
The Captain Reichbert surrendered: the boarded ship was convoyed
with 4 hunting ships in the port of Lima. The rest of the fleet was
refuged in Panama. The result of the attack was discouraging - 400
sailors in prison and 5 ships sequestered.
The next day, the newspaper had a rich discussion of the matter.
Nothing else helped Ari more than being attacked: the step was short
from being a monster that kills to victim of a conspiracy. The
authoritative The Times of London, struck by a news conference
held by Ari in Claridge, wrote that the Panama’s flag of Onassis’
ships could be seen as that of freedom. So it seemed that the black
flag of pirates depended on how you looked at it. This happened in
the middle of November. At the end of the month, the supreme court
fined the Olympic whaling, the Panama society owner of the fleet,
57 million soles Peruvian which corresponded to about 2,800.00
American dollars for killing a great number of whales in their
water - about three thousand. The payment had to happen within 5
days or his ships would be forfeited and sold.
Ari didn’t leave himself vulnerable: All the business fell to his
insurance company, the fabulous Lloyd’s of London. Onassis took
precautions against each possible risk in covering his ships,
including that of sequestration and capture. He even had a clause
which forewarned that an indemnity of 30 thousand dollars a day must
be paid if his ships had to navigating between October 7 and November
20 for any reason. Still, the far sightedness of Ari was his winning
card. The Lloyd’s paid the fee, the ships got the sea, but the
whaler’s adventures were finished however.
Where the Peruvian government could not succeed, the anger of the
gloomy sailors that were witness of slaughter too cruel to continue
to be silent were able to do so. Their testimony to the international
commission of whale hunting bound the clamist Lars Andersen and the
captain Reichbert to their responsibility. The documents produced and
the photos adduced were incontestable evidence. The accusation gained
in strength on the table of the jury - blue whales killed illegally,
megatherium, sperm-whales - every species was killed without
regard.
At the same time, March 1956, Ari dismantled his fleet, selling it
for 8,200.00 American dollars to the Japanese, and had to find
another business. He found the Pelagic fund, an institution where
the goal was the safeguard of marine fauna and Onassis paid the
principal quota of 570 thousand US dollars.
So ended Ari’s proclivity for whale hunting, like the defeat of David
over Goliath.
Onassis needed the dominion of the sky, another mythical element of
the universe dear to the classic world. The waters were already
furrowed in all the world with ships that brought his colors, but
the skies were not violated. Even if Ari preferred the sea and
considered his ships the roots of a tree, he then considered
airplanes as the leaves. He let himself attempt the project of
taking off the national Greek airline and made it his creature.
The Greek prime minister Constantine Karamanlis, member of the right
party national union radical, who arrived in power with the election
of 1957 had decided to derive a source of richness which remained
unused to that point. He had quite decided to take back the Greek
economy and the richness and financial ability of the great ship
owners.
Onassis was the first target, and the TAE was the first business
offered. In reality, The loss of the company stimulated Ari to start
the only private national airline in the world. The air fleet was
derisory, 12 DC-8, the famous Dakota, and one DC-4. The only
international service that he could boast was a weekly flight to
Paris and one to London.
What Karamanlis asked Ari was to give an international rest to the
company by taking it away completely. It was in this way that
Onassis, migrating bird, poised himself on Greek ground and assumed
command of 13 airplanes, signing the agreement on July 30, 1956.
856 people worked at TAE and all of them were hired by the Olympic
Airways at the same salary and working conditions. By baptizing the
airline with the name symbol of his winnings, Onassis showed that
the airplanes would further his docket and money.
The negotiation with the government was meticulous and Onassis
succeeded in gaining a series of important concessions. The
government was anxious to encourage rich people to invest money in
Greek enterprises and allotted the Olympic Airways special
privileges: The monopoly on Greek aviation for 20 years, the
reimbursement by the government for any unauthorized strike,
reimbursement for loss in overseas flights, the right to bring their
profits abroad, exemption from land taxation in Greece, the right to
loan up to 3,500.00 US dollars from the government at a tax rate of
2.5%, and the exclusive rights on overseas flights.
The concessions were very generous, but the company was still working
at a loss for years, even though Ari called in the Frenchman Tom
Fabre who had directed the French line UTA. Fabre accepted the job
for two years and helped Olympic take off, but the company was never
a lucky enterprise. Without a direct plan or investment strategy,
the company passed from one crisis to another. Ari asked that his
monopoly rights be extended, because he intended on seeing better
results in the long run. He obtained an extension until 2006 which
included monopoly maintenance as well as the refueling of foreign
airlines.
By June 1957, the Olympic had started its international activity
with two weekly flights to London-Paros-Athens-Nicosia-Beirut and
had added 3 DC-6’s to the fleet. He had rented the airplanes from
UTA with a renewing practice, even though the advantages were
different, when Colone’s regime asked him to potentiate the fleet
with five Boeing 727’s and two 707’s for 54,100,000 US dollars. The
company’s problem was always that of acquisitions after seeing that
profits were scanty. Using “subordinate loans” through his abroad
society, Ari had managed to buy two comet English jets and three
Boeing 707’s. Now, the problem was difficult to resolve: the sum
invested was such that it involved an issue of action which Onassis
wanted to avoid at any cost.
He also resolved this situation by creating a society in
Panama—The Aircraft Leasing company—that worked as a financial
association, comprised 70% of the first national city bank, 15% by
Boeing, and 15% by another one of Ari’s societies in Panama. In this
way, the aircraft leasing company bought the airplanes from Boeing
and rented them to Olympic for ten years. The income of the rent
served to extinguish the debts through interest payments, first to
the bank, then to Boeing, and finally to Onassis’ society. Onassis
saw his 8,200,000 US dollars which he had invested in the business
all returned. The company continued along with much difficulty.
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