ABSTRACT
Success in shipping has largely been due to the ingenuity and courage of those captains and engineers of ships who spent years battling with the waves at sea and were prepared to take risks. Some of them with entrepreneurial talents, having saved some money, sought the assistance of banks for finance to start their business in shipping. They had an invaluable and intangible asset, their immense experience about how ships behaved at sea! Most of them were born and lived close to the sea, such as on Greek islands. Financial institutions saw the benefit of investing in shipping and came into partnership with those islanders, providing the bulk of the money for the purchase of a ship, which provided their primary security, the mortgage on the ship, until repayment of the loan. The lender is known as the mortgagee and the borrower as the mortgagor.
