Norwegian Shipping in the Twentieth Century: Norway’s successful navigation of the world’s most global industry

Abstract

As an economic historian, this reviewer has always seen shipping as the progenitor of globalization and ships as moveable capital assets whose purpose on the mercantile side is to transport raw materials, commodities, finished goods and diverse cargoes on a port-to-port basis, preferably on time and with no mishaps accruing. As such, shipowners provide a service to make a return on the considerable capital expended on ordering ships differentiated by type and requirements of trade, from shipbuilders (a true assembly industry). When in service, shipping is subject to the vagaries of supply and demand regulated by the level of ocean freight rates, and depreciation of assets over their lifetime use. Shipping and the supply side, i.e. shipbuilding, are activities periodically prone to booms and slumps. As Tenold (p. 99) notes, ‘When international trade sneezes, shipping catches a cold. When international trade catches a cold, shipping gets pneumonia.’ Seafarers largely went to sea out of economic necessity, although there was always an element who used the occupation as a means to an end to see the world, and shipowners ordered ships in the expectation of profits over, and in periods of short supply and high demand, well above the running costs of their assets. The classic case illustrating this point is the 1967 closure of the Suez Canal when independent tanker owners made fortunes almost overnight. Shipping is simply a business, and, as history has shown, one that attracted a fair number of chancers, to which Norwegian shipping was not immune, the Bergen tanker-owner, Hilmar Reksten being a particularly egregious case in point.1 Moreover, there is little romance in the