Lifeblood of the Merchant Marine : Ships or Sailors Want It? Chandlers Can Get It

For as long as people have sailed the seas, they have needed someone to supply their ships with provisions, tools and spare parts.

Since the 16th Century, when English candle makers--called chandlers--began bringing more than just candles on board the ships, those suppliers have been known as ship chandlers.

In many ways, they are the lifeblood of the merchant marine. If an army travels on its stomach, a ship sails on its larder. And its equipment is so varied that a chandler must be prepared to fill almost any mechanical or electronic need.

Chandlers must be resilient and resourceful. Sometimes they are asked to deliver unusual items.

Don Costello, president of J. M. Costello Supply Co. Inc. in Wilmington, has delivered coffins to cruise ships. “When you go on vacation, nobody thinks about dying,” Costello said, but the cruise ships carry coffins just in case.

No matter how unusual the item, chandlers are expected to supply it. “We’re in the food business, we’re in the deck and engine business, we’re a plumbing house, a hardware store, a grocery store, a dairy house, and then we’re everybody’s personal gofer,” says Steve Enlow, the 26-year-old president of Marine Marketing in Wilmington, which once supplied a ship with 144 boxes of condoms.

Not only do chandlers have to be able to supply anything, they have to deliver at any time. “The ship chandler business is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week type business,” said Costello, who has spent 38 years in ship supplying.

“Holidays don’t mean anything to these customers,” said Jeff Crouthamel, vice president of Harbor Ship Supply, referring to a ship captain who called on Christmas day wanting 12 gallons of milk brought to the ship immediately.

Crouthamel’s firm demonstrates another trait common to chandlers: It is very much a family business. He is a third-generation chandler, after his father, Harold, who is president of Harbor Ship Supply, and his grandfather.

Harbor Ship Supply opened in 1932 and is the largest chandlery on the West Coast. Based in San Pedro, it provides the three main shipboard needs: food; deck and engine supplies; spirits, tobacco and personal items.

Not all ship chandlers do that.

J. M. Costello Supply Co., for instance, has handled only deck and engine supplies--tools, spare parts and safety equipment--since its inception in 1939.

Costello took over the business from his father and runs it with his brother, Richard, who is vice president, and his sister Kathleen, the company treasurer. Keeping the business firmly within the family, Don Costello’s son and nephew help, loading and driving as Costello did when he started.

When Costello was a driver with the company, a Swedish tanker staffed with German officers cruised into port. It struck him as odd that this ship with 57 men ordered 25 cases of feminine sanitary napkins. “These particular Germans, the engineers, used them for oil filtering. It was their estimation that these were better than any filter made,” Costello said.

Chandlers also specialize by nationality.

Harbor Ship Supply chiefly services U.S. ships. It has contracts with Exxon and Arco, which Crouthamel considers his bread and butter accounts.

On the other hand, Enlow, who opened Marine Marketing in 1985, specializes in servicing foreign crews, a market that has been growing steadily since the end of World War II. For him, the competition is less for foreign crews than trying to land contracts with U.S. ships.

Enlow doesn’t even try to get any of Japanese business, however. Only Yamamoto Bros. handles that.

In 1932, the same year that Harbor Ship Supply started, John Yamamoto opened a small grocery store that catered to a fishing village on Terminal Island and the Japanese vessels that came into port.

Today, his son James is president of the company and has the Japanese market cornered. “Over a dozen (chandlers) have tried and failed to break into the Japanese market,” James Yamamoto said. But they stick with Yamamoto because they are reluctant to put their faith in someone they don’t know, he said.

Yamamoto Bros. has specialized in providing food for Japanese crews. In one corner of Yamamoto’s Wilmington warehouse, 25-pound bags of rice are stacked on pallets rising 30 feet into the air. The Japanese don’t buy rice at home because, Yamamoto says, it is one-third to one-fourth cheaper in the United States.

Some of the purchases can run far afield of things normally found on board a ship.

Sets of Golf Clubs

In the early ‘70s, when, as James Yamamoto describes it, “everybody and their brother was playing golf,” he stocked sets of golf clubs. One ship’s chief steward bought a Jack Nicklaus set just so he could take them home and put them in his living room as a conversation piece. It was a status symbol, Yamamoto said.

Another status symbol for Japanese crews is to take home cans of Budweiser beer from America. Budweiser is sold in Japan, but the cans have Japanese writing on them. The cans Yamamoto sells does not.

As world economic powers rise and fall, the fortunes of a chandler’s clientele often determines the chandler’s own financial health.

Crouthamel divides his ship chandlery experience into the old days when his grandfather ran the company, the boom days during the Vietnam War and the current sluggish times, especially for those serving U.S. ships.

In the 1930s, ships stayed in port for a much longer time, had no refrigeration on board and needed supplies such as coal, ice and live animals. Crouthamel said that once his grandfather “took a live cow (to a ship) in a sling. It fell out and was swimming around. They had to get a water taxi to come out and get it out of the water.”

In July, 1937, Harbor Ship Supply got a rush order from the U.S. Navy at 6 p.m. on a Saturday. Supplies had to be brought aboard the USS Lexington quickly because it was about to leave in a futile search for Amelia Earhart, missing in the Pacific with her co-pilot Fred Noonan.

Harbor Ship Supply received a letter of commendation from Rear Admiral W. C. Watts for the prompt service; it had provisioned the ship by 9 p.m.

When ships began using large containers to transport goods in the 1960s, they also began moving on stricter timetables and spending less time in port. A ship at dock costs a shipowner money. Today, chandlers have to fill orders faster for the ship’s stores and supply personal items for sailors, who may get no time ashore.

70-Hour Weeks

The Vietnam War meant good economic times for Crouthamel. The government “just wanted to get the stuff out,” he said, and was willing to pay well for that. The profit margin then was 30% to 40% and Harbor Ship Supply was regularly putting in 70-our weeks.

During the early ‘70s, Harbor Ship Supply also serviced British ships, and British sailors had a reputation for heavy drinking. Crouthamel said it was not uncommon to receive orders from a British ship that read “one pallet of hardware and 20 pallets (500 cases) of beer.”

Then the war ended and the ships he serviced dwindled. Today, Crouthamel says he works on a 10% to 15% profit margin and depends heavily on U.S. oil companies that run ships to and from the Alaskan oil fields.

Even that business seems to be waning. “The Alaskan crude has reached its peak,” Crouthamel said. “It’s on the decline now.”

Harbor Ship Supply is down to 30 employees from a high of 50 a couple of years ago. Crouthamel says when the Alaskan crude dries up his business will be cut by 50% to 60%.

Although U.S. shipping has declined, foreign shipping has increased. And as Japan’s economic fortunes rose, so did those of Yamamoto Bros. Since shortly after World War II, the firm had seen its business steadily increase, until recently.

A couple of years ago Yamamoto had 20 employees and served 80 to 100 ships a month. Now, he has 13 employees and handles 60 to 80 ships. Yamamoto cites two factors to explain why this is happening even though Japan is economically strong.

What happened to U.S. shipping is beginning to happen to the Japanese, he said. As Japanese labor unions became stronger and demanded more money, ship owners began replacing personnel with Filipino, Korean and Indonesian crews, which cost them far less. It also pushed them into using chandlers that serve the new crews’ dietary needs.

The other factor is that ships are becoming more automated, thus requiring smaller crews. Yamamoto said that ships, until about 10 years ago, regularly had crews of 40 to 60. Today, that number is 16 to 19, with newer ships being built that will require only 12 crew members on board. With fewer mouths to feed, there are fewer supplies to buy.

Not all ship chandlery business is shrinking, though.

Enlow of Marine Marketing just added his fourth employee, and for him the future looks bright. He vigorously pursues the foreign market, with agents in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Greece and Great Britain. He starts work at 4 a.m. every weekday and usually stays until midnight. He admits that his hours put a strain on his marriage but says his wife also works in the maritime industry and understands why he puts in such long hours.

Like other chandlers, Enlow has fielded his share of strange requests from ship captains. Filipino crews will order pig heads. Chinese crews like to eat chicken feet.

Getting what the ship needs is what drives the chandler. “That’s the name of the game as a ship chandler,” Costello said. “If we don’t have it, we’ll do our best to find it.”

Once Costello supplied two live goats to the Pakistani crew of a cruise ship for a religious sacrifice. “We had to send a truck to Chino,” Costello said. “It was the closest place to find live goats.”

As to the future of ship chandlery, it depends who you talk to.

“In 20 years there won’t be any chandlers,” said Crouthamel, noting that the Alaskan oil fields are drying up and that ships aren’t being built in the United States. Since Harbor Ship Supply services only U.S. ships, his viewpoint is gloomy.

He won’t encourage his three sons, all of whom are younger than 8, to enter the business.

To avoid a slump in business, Costello is branching out to supply land-based industries such as machine shops and refineries.

Yamamoto is still comfortable with his monopoly of the Japanese market, although he doesn’t think his sons and daughter want to follow him into the business.

Enlow says: “Everybody feels that the industry is doomed.” But ask him if he feels that way and he grins like someone with a secret and says firmly: “No.”