Voyage Into Oblivion

The Age of the Supership dawned barely a decade and a half ago. Today the giant supertankers that once fanned out from the Arabian Gulf with their incredible cargoes of crude oil, and their potential for disaster, are following the dinosaur into oblivion.

In the early 1970s shipyards were turning out the monster vessels as fast as they could. Massive 200,000-ton ships a quarter-mile long soon were eclipsed by ones with twice the capacity. With the Persian Gulf states exporting oil at record rates, there seemed to be almost no limit--a million tons or more. The ships were so huge that they could not even put into port, as such. They hooked up to offshore buoys to load and unload.

Suddenly everything changed. First came the embargo of 1973, and then the Iranian cutoff six years later. New sources of supply developed in Alaska, Mexico and the North Sea that could be served directly by pipelines or more efficiently by smaller tankers. The Arab states began to export refined petroleum products rather than crude. The VLCCs (very large crude carriers) were not suited for such trade.

Today many of the tankers are being cut up for scrap after only a few voyages. Others wallow at anchor as storage vessels. The biggest VLCC of all, the 555,843-ton Seawise Giant, was built in 1975. Tanker tonnage has been cut in half. There are no known VLCCs in construction now.

All this is difficult for shipowners. Many of the tankers never were paid for. But shed no tears for the dinosaurs themselves. They were graceless, computer-run engineering achievements--not ships as we think of ships. You would not write a poem about one. There was little romance to a giant oil tank with propellers and a small metal frame hotel plunked onto the rear. Their detractors viewed them as mindless floating environmental time bombs. We mourn not.