Supership

by Noel Mostert

Book Overview

Subscribers to The New Yorker will remember this epic from its serialized appearance there. Written in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo, SUPERSHIP vividly recounts life at sea on a modern... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140041184
• ISBN13: 9780140041187
• Release Date: January 1976
• Publisher: Penguin
• Length: 369 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Seagoing hubris did not end with Titanic...

Originally serialized in the New Yorker in the wake of the early 1970's energy crisis, this book is an in-depth history and analysis of the biggest moving objects ever built: oil supertankers. A quarter mile long, half a football field wide, and with several cavernous tanks each the size of a cathedral, these behemoths carry enough crude oil to meet the energy needs of a small city for a year. Their small crews and giant payloads maximize shipping company profits, but their sheer size is no guarantee against the elements and mismanagement, two factors which, when coupled with fundamental structural instability, have caused scores of sinkings and spills since the first supertankers were built in response to the temporary closing of the Suez Canal in 1956. Written over a decade before the Exxon Valdez catastrophe, the author already had plenty of disasters to cite as examples of these ships' inherent unreliabilty and inevitable environmental impacts. But worse than the headline-grabbing collisions, explosions, and slicks is the day-to-day trickle of deadly pollution these monster ships leave in their wakes-over a million tons annually casually released into oceans during routine cleaning, bilge pumping, and emergency dumping in stormy seas. Leaking, cracking, colliding, exploding, sinking, these VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers) are apt symbols for the wasteful societies whose heedless practices first made supertankers a "necessity." Mostert takes as his frame of reference a voyage he took aboard the 220,000 ton Ardshiel in 1973 and his appraisal of his ship and the supertanker fleet is objective and even-handed, delivered in a gripping style that avoids sensationalism. The maritime history is fascinating, the statistics startling, and the litany of mishap appalling. But more than an eyewitness account of these outsized ships and the overworked and underqualified crews that run them, Supership is a stunning expose of the oil business and the naked greed which drives it without moral compass. This book is due an updated edition.

Follow-up to Scott Newland's Review

Mr. Newland pointed out that the book was published in 1975 and that Ultra Large Crude Carriers or ULCCs which is the official industry term for a supertanker, have probably gotten bigger. Indeed he is correct in his assumption. The world's largest ship right now (which also makes it the largest man-made moving object on the planet) is the Jahre Viking weighs a monumental 564,763 deadweight tons; has a length of 458.45 meters (approximately one third of a mile); and is driven by a 37,300 Kilowatt turbine.Information can be found at .... As Mr. Newland anticipated, the Jahre Viking was launched in 1976, one year after the book Supership was published. The Jahre Viking was built by Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd of Japan and is currently operated by Jahre-Wallem of Norway, one of the largest ship management companies in the world.It goes without saying that if an accident were to happen to a ship of this size, the environmental consequences would be catastrophic. Of course, since 9-11-2001, the terrorist threat has added another dimension to the dilemma. One would hope that security measures have been re-evaluated, however I am not hopeful. As of this writing today, we here in the USA just saw a 15-year old boy take a small private Cessna aircraft, fly it past one of our most secure military bases -- McDill Air Force Base in Florida -- and crash it into a high-rise building owned by Bank of America. If that is how lax our security is on our own home turf and only three months after 9-11, I shudder to think what the security is like in international waters on the open seas.I must agree with Mr. Newland that a 2nd edition of this book is needed and perhaps, now more than ever.

Frightening and Illuminating

I first read Supership in the late 1970's and did not reread it until this year (2001). The second time around made a much deeper impression on me, and I found it to be - for the most part - as riveting and terrifying as a horror novel. I only wish Mostert's tale was fiction.The book describes the pros and cons of supertankers, which I'm sure have only grown since the behemoths described from 30 years ago. Mostert is no muckraker, and he does humanize the crew in good and appropriate detail (they are individuals; not monsters, not corporate automatons), but the overriding feeling I got in reading the book was dismay and helpless frustration. The impact that these ships, and the oil-consuming culture that we take for granted, has resulted in more ecological devastation than we can know. The mysteries of ocean currents are one thing that make the range of oil spills and leaks impossible to know, but the way the earth depends on the numerous lifeforms in the sea are another. Like Rachel Carson a decade earlier, Mostert is a thinking and balanced environmental reporter, and he knows the sea. I found him to be an excellent writer, using the structure of the Ardshiel's basic Europe-Gulf-Europe round trip to order the book but spinning numerous side stories related to each stage of the trip to cast light on various historical and environmental issues. It held my interest and terrified me at the same time.The fact that 27 years have passed since its writing seemed like a mixed blessing. On one hand, the earth has survived continued oil spills of huge proportions (the book makes you feel that mankind would not survive the 20th century). On the other hand, the spills and tanker volume have only increased since the early 1970's and who knows how much worse things have gotten.Supership is a great read and I would hope that a 2nd edition is in the works!

A fascinating look into the world of supetankers.

I loved this book. It deals with many things, such as how these ships were built, and why. It also gives these massive vessels a human face, because the author actually trvelled aboard a supertanker, and he gives an exellent account of the voyage, as seen through his eyes, and those of the crew. A person reading this book will find themselves wondering how some shipowners are even allowed to operate at all, or how things have gotten the way they have. He raises many hard questions concerning flags of convenience, the environment, and ship safety. If you are into ships, the sea, or just want a good read, this is well worth getting hold of.