ABSTRACT
The second half of the twentieth century was an era in which the Greek-owned fleet rose to the apex of world shipping in terms of tonnage. After continuous growth during the 1950s and 1960s, the Greek-owned fleet after 1970 was larger than the Japanese, Norwegian, British or American fleets (see Figure 9.1). The Greeks in the postwar period constituted the worlds biggest group of tramp shipping operators, managing an international fleet under various flags and carrying dry and liquid bulk cargoes for third countries. During the 1940s and 1950s the Greeks sailed their ships under flags of convenience, carried cargoes for the US and the northern Europeans and were involved mainly in the Atlantic and European sea routes. Developments in world sea transport led them subsequently to change trading partners and routes. In the 1960s and 1970s they increasingly carried cargoes for developing and socialist countries and Japan, increasingly operated under the Greek flag, and sailed more in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In the 1980s their trading partners and routes remained more or less the same but they began again to ‘flag-out’ from Greece in favour of more ‘open’ registries. The 1990s have witnessed a reluctant ‘return’ to the Greek flag and a small increase in the fleet. This chapter will investigate developments in world trade from the 1950s to 1990s, the world division of maritime transport, and the growth and role of the Greeks internationally.
