An Arabian Adventure
- Book Review,
by Gifford S. Rossi
Book Description
This is the story of one of the greatest visionary achievements of the twentieth century, the building of the Arabian Dry Dock.In June 1967 the Arab-Israeli war closed the Suez Canal. Ships that formerly would have navigated the Canal were forced to take the much longer route around the Cape of Good Hope. At the same time, demand in the West for oil and petrol was steadily increasing and the tankers built to transport oil from the Arabian Gulf to Europe and the Western Hemisphere were dramatically growing in size. Shipowners and shipyards competed with each other in building ever-bigger carriers of crude oil.However, there were very few shipyards or dry docks with the facilities to handle very large ships and absolutely none between southwest Europe and Japan. Towing these vessels to a shipyard large enough to accept them for routine inspection or repair was exceedingly expensive.Gifford Rossi conceived the Arabian Dry Dock as a prestige project to unite the oil-producing countries in the Arabian Gulf and to fill a gap in the provision of ship-repair services where they were actually needed. Despite countless setbacks and in the face of great skepticism, the dream was triumphantly achieved.
About the Author
Gifford S. Rossi worked as Managing Director of the shipping company Niarchos in Hamburg and then established a successful company in northeast England marketing LP-gas to British industry. He went on to build the dry dock in the Arabian Gulf documented in An Arabian Adventure.
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