SHIPPING: The Big N

Emblazoned on the smokestacks of dozens of ships around the world is a huge white N. It does not, as landlubbers might think, stand for Nicaragua or The Netherlands but for Stavros Spyros Niarchos, 46, a short (5 ft. 7 in.), slim citizen of Greece whose private merchant fleet is bigger than the navies of Nicaragua and The Netherlands combined. Niarchos. whose name means "master of ships," claims to be the world's biggest independent shipowner, with some 1.600,000 tons afloat and abuilding (v. Moore-McCormack's 400,000 tons). Though he has launched more ships than any other Greek since Helen, Niarchos is better known to gossip columnists as an international party-thrower who is so heavy with chips that he helped with the down payment when his brother-in-law—and No. 3 Independent Shipowner*—Aristotle Socrates Onassis purchased the Casino at Monte Carlo.

This week Niarchos had his best excuse in years for a party. In the final round of a long-standing dispute with the U.S. Government, he reached a settlement that will enable him to expand some more. Since 1953, the Government had seized 19 of Niarchos' U.S.-built ships, charged in a suit that he had bought them through front corporations specially set up in the U.S. (TIME, Feb. 22, 1954), though barred as an alien from buying U.S. war-surplus vessels for American flag operation. Under the final settlement reached last week, Niarchos will 1) pay the U.S. $4,500,000 (making a total of $12,579,500) and 2) get back the last five ships (valued at $10 million on the foreign market) of the 13 ships he has recovered. As a bonus to the U.S., Niarchos also agreed to have three supertankers built for $30 million in U.S. shipyards, the world's most expensive. Though Niarchos prefers to cut costs by sailing his ships under foreign flags, he also agreed to operate the new tankers under U.S. registry.

Prepaid Junkets. Shipowner Niarchos seldom visits his 48 ships or his worldwide string of companies, keeps his office under his hat. He is a familiar figure in England, where he stables his string of race horses. In Switzerland, where he spends several weeks a year, he is known as an expert skier. On two continents he is known as a knowledgeable art collector; he recently paid $300,000 for El Greco's Pietà. On the Riviera, Niarchos keeps a fleet of sports cars, to shuttle between his two Cap d'Antibes palaces, and two yachts: the black-hulled, 190-ft. schooner Creole (a 32-man crew) and "a little one," the 103-ft. Eros. Niarchos delights in packing celebrities off on prepaid Mediterranean cruises, although on last year's Mediterranean junket for Party-Thrower Elsa Maxwell and friends (Olivia de Havilland, Aly Khan, Perle Mesta) Niarchos was "too busy" to go along.

Niarchos got his start in shipping while working in his family's flour-milling business in Greece in 1929. He convinced his "conservative" uncles that they could cut the cost of importing grain from Argentina by operating their own ships, later branched into shipping on his own. In 1939 Niarchos leased his eight ships to the Allies and went off to corvette duty as a Royal Hellenic Navy lieutenant. By war's end, half his ships had been sunk.