Onassis OLYMPIC CHALLENGER souvenir catalogue - Lardex

Introduction
One of the most dramatic chapters of modern whaling history was written by German whalers
under the aegis of the legendary Greek tanker tycoon Aristoteles Socrates Onassis (1906-
1975). Between 1950 and 1956 he operated a whaling fleet around floating factory OLYMPIC
CHALLENGER. Most vessels flew the flag-of-convenience of Panama, while some of the 16
catchers were registered in Honduras. Between 96% and 98% of the almost 600 crewmembers
were Germans, quite a few of them with experience from German pre-War whaling. For the
first three seasons 1950/51 to 1952/53, operations were managed by a Hamburg office of the
Erste Deutsche Walfang Gesellschaft (“First German Whaling Co”, founded in 1935), the last
two seasons 1954/55 and 1955/56 (the fleet did not whale in 53/54) by Onassis’ management
company Olympic Maritime Agency in Hamburg.
In five whaling seasons, OLYMPIC CHALLENGER processed more than 22,000 whales. Under
pressure from the management, the stipulations of the new “International Convention for the
Regulation of Whaling” (ICRW) of 1946 were systematically ignored. In one season, 95% of
the sperm whales taken were under the legal size limit, in another the humpback whale quota
was exceeded 14 times, and the resulting higher oil yield was masked by increased statistics
of blue and fin whale catches.
Panama had signed the ICRW, but did not ratify it for several years. In strictly legal terms, the
infractions of the Whaling Convention committed by OLYMPIC CHALLENGER were thus not
illegal during the first seasons. But they contravened the spirit of the Convention. The
German crew and the Hamburg whale biologists were concerned about their putative “illegal”
conduct, and after two seasons the German government discontinued dispatching scientists
from the Federal Institute for Fisheries Research with the Onassis whaling fleet.
What unfolded then, was a dramatic, international and very dirty action story, involving US
secret agents, Norwegian and German transport trade unions, the German Federal Fisheries
Research Institute, the Norwegian Whaling Association, the Peruvian navy, Lloyds of
London, the Erste Deutsche Walfang Gesellschaft in Hamburg, bribery, treason, court action
in Hamburg and Rotterdam, mutual confiscation of ships and whale oil cargoes, plus the
diplomatic efforts of at least half a dozen maritime nations in Europe and the Americas. This
was too much even for an unscrupulous business hardliner like Onassis. He sold his whaling
fleet to Japan in 1956. At the end of negotiaions with the Norwegian Whaling Association
about the damages which the Norwegian industry had sustained through his fleet’s infractions
of international whaling regulations, he conceeded to the Norwegian side to keep their face
and to release a faked message that he, Onassis, admitted the damage done by OLYMPIC
CHALLENGER.
Little concerned about his own reputation,
ruined as it was anyway, he even let them
spread the word that he paid a penalty of 3
million Dollars intended to build the House
of Whaling (hvalfangstens hus) next to the
harbour of Sandefjord. With Onassis’ known
sangfroid and toughness, however, it is more
than likely, that the Norwegian whaler
owners in fact were forced to spent this
money out of their own pockets.
2