The Big N

Emblazoned on the smokestacks of dozens of ships around the world is a huge white N. It does not, as landlubbers might think, stand for Nicaragua or The Netherlands but for Stavros Spyros Niarchos, 46, a short (5 ft. 7 in.), slim citizen of Greece whose private merchant fleet is bigger than the navies of Nicaragua and The Netherlands combined. Niarchos. whose name means "master of ships," claims to be the world's biggest independent shipowner, with some 1.600,000 tons afloat and abuilding (v. Moore-McCormack's 400,000 tons). Though he has launched more ships than any other Greek since Helen, Niarchos is better known to gossip columnists as an international party-thrower who is so heavy with chips that he helped with the down payment when his brother-in-law--and No. 3 Independent Shipowner*--Aristotle Socrates Onassis purchased the Casino at Monte Carlo.

This week Niarchos had his best excuse in years for a party. In the final round of a long-standing dispute with the U.S. Government, he reached a settlement that will enable him to expand some more. Since 1953, the Government had seized 19 of Niarchos' U.S.-built ships, charged in a suit that he had bought them through front corporations specially set up in the U.S. (TIME, Feb. 22, 1954), though barred as an alien from buying U.S. war-surplus vessels for American flag operation. Under the final settlement reached last week, Niarchos will 1) pay the U.S. $4,500,000 (making a total of $12,579,500) and 2) get back the last five ships (valued at $10 million on the foreign market) of the 13 ships he has recovered. As a bonus to the U.S., Niarchos also agreed to have three supertankers built for $30 million in U.S. shipyards, the world's most expensive. Though Niarchos prefers to cut costs by sailing his ships under foreign flags, he also agreed to operate the new tankers under U.S. registry.

Prepaid Junkets. Shipowner Niarchos seldom visits his 48 ships or his worldwide string of companies, keeps his office under his hat. He is a familiar figure in England, where he stables his string of race horses. In Switzerland, where he spends several weeks a year, he is known as an expert skier. On two continents he is known as a knowledgeable art collector; he recently paid $300,000 for El Greco's Piet`a. On the Riviera, Niarchos keeps a fleet of sports cars, to shuttle between his two Cap d'Antibes palaces, and two yachts: the black-hulled, 190-ft. schooner Creole (a 32-man crew) and "a little one," the 103-ft. Eros. Niarchos delights in packing celebrities off on prepaid Mediterranean cruises, although on last year's Mediterranean junket for Party-Thrower Elsa Maxwell and friends (Olivia de Havilland, Aly Khan, Perle Mesta) Niarchos was "too busy" to go along.

Niarchos got his start in shipping while working in his family's flour-milling business in Greece in 1929. He convinced his "conservative" uncles that they could cut the cost of importing grain from Argentina by operating their own ships, later branched into shipping on his own. In 1939 Niarchos leased his eight ships to the Allies and went off to corvette duty as a Royal Hellenic Navy lieutenant. By war's end, half his ships had been sunk.

Short Ships, Long Terms. After the war Niarchos staked his insurance money on the belief that ships would be short at a time when most shippers predicted a surplus. As a "friendly" alien, he was able to buy surplus U.S. Liberties and Victories (average 1945 price: $540,000); he traded them off at a profit and bought surplus T-2 tankers, including the 13 he bought illegally. He persuaded U.S. oil companies who owned most of their own tankers and leased the rest on short-term charter that he could save them money by operating the ships himself on long-term contract.

With the long-term charters in hand, Niarchos was able to borrow money to finance bigger, faster ships. In the U.S. he built the 45,509-ton World Glory, the world's biggest tanker when it was launched in 1954. In Japan and Sweden last year, he placed orders for 15 new ships totaling nearly 500,000 tons, ordered two more in Germany. In Britain last week shipyard workers were outfitting the 47,750-ton Spyros Niarchos, the world's biggest tanker and fourth biggest merchantman ever launched in the British Isles.

Niarchos is reputed to get more ship per dollar than anyone else in the business, because, as he says, he "always waits until the yards are thirsty." Thus, when he ordered eight supertankers in thirsty Japanese yards last year, he was able to squeeze costs to $117 a deadweight ton, cut building time to 14 months, v. a minimum $160 and 36 months today. New orders in the past year have given Niarchos a 600,000-ton lead over Brother-in-law Onassis. Though friendly socially, Niarchos and Onassis are deadly competitors, fought bitterly when Onassis made a deal with Saudi Arabia two years ago that might have given him close to a monopoly in carrying Arabian oil. Niarchos teamed up with other shipowners to fight Onassis.

Niarchos plans to keep on building bigger ships on the theory that operating costs increase only slightly as capacity goes up. He talks of atomic-powered 100,000-tonners in the not-too-distant future. Present-day merchant fleets, Niarchos points out, are never too far from the financial reefs. In a bad year, a ship can lose more than half its value. In the best of times, merchantmen usually work ten years or more to pay off their owners' mortgages. Thinking of his heavily mortgaged fleet, Niarchos claims he is still a long way from blue water. Says he jokingly: "All we really own is the air between the funnel and the sky."

* The second: U.S.-born Daniel K. Ludwig, who controls National Bulk Carriers and other lines.

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