Ari Onassis: From Penniless Refugee to Oil Shipping King

A 16-year-old kid who speaks four languages watches his family lose everything overnight. He flees to Argentina with nothing. No money. No connections. No plan. Thirty years later, he owns the largest private tanker fleet on the planet, throws parties with JFK and Churchill on his yacht, and marries the most famous widow in America.

This is Chapter 7 of Torsten Dennin’s “From Tulips to Bitcoins.” It is the story of Aristotle Onassis and crude oil shipping.

The Fall of Smyrna

The Onassis family was from Smyrna, a port city in modern-day Turkey. Wealthy Greeks. The family fortune came from the tobacco trade, and the father owned ten ships. Life was good.

Then in 1922, the Turkish army retook Smyrna. The Greek population was expelled. Overnight, the Onassis family went from wealthy merchants to penniless refugees. Everything was gone. The ships. The business. The house. All of it.

Young Aristotle, just a teenager, made his way to Argentina. He worked odd jobs. He imported tobacco. He scraped by. But he was watching. He was learning. And he was waiting for the right moment.

Six Ships for a Tenth of Their Value

The 1930s depression crushed the global shipping industry. Ships sat idle. Companies went bankrupt. Nobody wanted to buy freighters when there was nothing to ship.

Onassis saw his opening. He bought six rundown cargo ships from the Canadian National Steamship Company for 120,000 dollars. About one-tenth of their actual value. Everyone thought he was crazy. Who buys ships during the worst economic crisis in modern history?

This turned out to be the foundation of his empire.

By the time World War II started, Onassis had expanded to 46 freighters and tankers. He leased them to the Allied forces. Smart move number two: he registered his ships under the Panamanian flag. That meant they were technically neutral. They carried cargo for the war effort but stayed out of the naval battles.

While other companies lost vessels to torpedoes and mines, Onassis kept his fleet intact. As the global supply of ships shrank, his rates went up. Fewer ships available, higher price per voyage.

The Biggest Tanker in the World

After the war, Onassis kept expanding. He built the largest private commercial fleet in the world. In 1950, he commissioned the biggest oil tanker ever built at that time. 236 meters long. Built at the Howaldt shipyard in Germany.

Then in 1954, he made the deal that should have cemented his dominance forever. He struck an exclusive agreement with the Saudi royal family to transport their oil. He set up the Saudi Arabian Tanker Company with 25 to 30 ships dedicated to carrying about 10 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports.

The Deal That Almost Destroyed Him

There was one problem. Saudi oil production was controlled by Aramco, a joint venture of American Standard Oil companies. These were some of the most powerful corporations on Earth. They did not want a Greek shipping magnate cutting into their business.

The US government and European allies pressured Saudi Arabia to cancel the deal. And it worked. The exclusive agreement fell apart.

Onassis was left with over a hundred tankers and almost nothing to carry. His ships sat idle in harbors. The costs were enormous. His empire was crumbling.

This is the kind of moment where most business stories end. But Onassis was about to get the luckiest break of his life.

The Suez Canal Changes Everything

July 1956. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Britain and France depended on that canal for oil shipments from the Middle East.

In October, Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt. Operation Musketeer. Sunken ships blocked the canal completely. It stayed closed until April 1957.

Suddenly, every oil tanker in the world had to go around the southern tip of Africa instead of through Suez. The demand for tanker capacity exploded overnight.

And who had over a hundred idle tankers sitting around with nothing to do? Aristotle Onassis.

He doubled his shipping rates. There were almost no other tankers available. The man who was nearly bankrupt months earlier was making a fortune because he had the one thing the world desperately needed.

More Crises, More Profits

The pattern repeated. The Six-Day War in 1967 disrupted Middle Eastern shipping again. The 1973 oil crisis sent oil prices through the roof. Each time, tanker demand spiked. Each time, Onassis profited.

His company, Olympic Maritime, posted profits of over 100 million dollars. In the 1960s and 70s, that was an insane amount of money.

The Man Behind the Empire

Dennin’s book also covers the personal side, and it is just as wild.

Onassis first married Tina Livanos, daughter of another Greek shipping dynasty. They divorced. He then had a long relationship with the opera singer Maria Callas. In 1968, at age 62, he married Jacqueline Kennedy, the former First Lady. She was 39. According to the book, he called her his “supertanker” because she cost him as much as one of his ships.

His total wealth exceeded one billion dollars. He owned banks in Geneva, Olympic Airways, the Olympic Tower in New York City, and an entire Greek island called Skorpios.

He also transformed Monaco from a sleepy Mediterranean town into the luxury destination it is today. Built hotels, renovated the port and the casino. His yacht parties were legendary. JFK, Winston Churchill, Hemingway. He is also credited with bringing together Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly.

What Stands Out From This Chapter

Reading this in Dennin’s book, the thing that grabs me is timing. Onassis did not just get lucky once. He got lucky over and over. But calling it luck is not fair. He positioned himself to benefit from disruptions. He bought ships when they were cheap. He built a fleet larger than he needed. When the disruption came, he was the only one ready.

Same pattern as Rockefeller in Chapter 5. Buy assets when nobody wants them. Build when others are scared. Wait for the world to catch up. Different resource, same strategy.

But the Saudi deal part is a good reminder. Onassis was powerful, but not powerful enough to fight the American oil companies and the US government at the same time. He was saved not by his own genius but by a geopolitical crisis in Egypt that nobody predicted. Sometimes the line between ruin and fortune is just a news headline you had no control over.

Previous: Chapter 6: Chicago Fire Wheat

Next: Chapter 8: Soybean Scandal

This is part of my From Tulips to Bitcoins book retelling series.