ONASSIS VS NIARCHOS

Shipping rivals - in love, life and yachts

One of the few personalities who came close to Onassis as a “man of mark” (to use Churchill’s description of Onassis) was Stavros Niarchos (1909-1996), who was three years younger than his fellow Greek shipping billionaire. Both men married into the illustrious Livanos shipping family, becoming brothers-in-law, then rivals.

Competing in shipping, real estate (Greek islands, French Riviera villas) and the social sphere, Niarchos appeared to live the maxim that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Each time Onassis ordered a giant new tanker for his fleet, Niarchos would order an even bigger ship. Niarchos would end up marrying Onassis’ first wife, Tina. With pleasure craft, Niarchos initially opted for his three-masted wooden 65-metre sailing yacht Creole, but ended up commissioning essentially a copy of Christina, using the same designer, Caesar Pinnau. Atlantis (1973) had a strikingly similar profile and general arrangement, but stretched from 99 to 116 metres.

She was built 20 years after the creation of Christina, with the same light oak interiors but with a couple more cabins and a larger owner’s apartment. Another difference lay in the art aboard: it was all real. Niarchos was a very serious collector.

Around the time Onassis died in 1975, Niarchos sold Atlantis, making many times his money – something unheard of in yachting then. (She became a possession of the Saudi royal family; today, she is Navtilvs.) In the late 1970s, Niarchos commissioned an almost identical boat to Atlantis. Pinnau returned to design Atlantis II (1981). Like the first Atlantis, she was built at Hellenic, Niarchos’ own yard near Athens. By now, Christina was property of the Greek state, but, rebuilt as Christina O, she would claim the prize for the most rooms of all – if not most overall room.

Atlantis II remains in the Niarchos family. Her home is Monaco, and she and Christina O can sometimes be found circling one another, inadvertently, in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, as if the driving forces of Stavros Niarchos and Aristotle Onassis live on (many would argue they do). Both yachts can be considered ultra-rare, “200-year” vessels. Indeed, it is hard to imagine them ever being decommissioned.

While Niarchos and Onassis came to be regarded as enemies, they had the kind of mutual admiration that could only arise from a deep understanding of what one another achieved in business and beyond. They invited each other aboard their yachts, and one story, perhaps apocryphal, sums it all up: the two men allegedly having lunch in New York City, after which they strolled past a Bentley showroom and bought a Corniche model each. Niarchos gestured to pick up the bill. “No, no, Stavros,” interceded Onassis, “let me get these; you paid for lunch.”