The book contrasts Onassis mythology with evidence such as board minutes, wage records, specifications, insurance, charters, loans, correspondence, and logs. Popular coverage can document celebrity, but it cannot by itself reconstruct how a shipping empire financed, crewed, insured, and operated its vessels. The author's access to hundreds of company boxes therefore changes the work from biography into maritime business history. Its research story also exposes a preservation problem because modern Greek shipping firms rarely organize or open corporate archives to scholars.
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Recovering global shipping history from private company records
Creating Global Shipping shows why maritime business history depends on fragile private archives rather than celebrity stories alone.