Surge to the Sea

Henrik Ibsen once observed that in seafaring Norway "everyone ought to be ready to take the helm." Norwegians take Ibsen at his word. With a population of only 3,700,000, Norway has 372 shipping lines and accounts for 10% of all the merchant ships at sea. Aiming for an even greater share of what is elsewhere considered a depressed indus try, the aggressive Norwegians have ordered, at a cost of $1.1 billion, nearly 20% of all the new merchant vessels under construction throughout the world.

Many of them will sail under the green-striped house flag of the country's No. 1 shipowner: Sigval Bergesen d.y. (for the Norwegian words den yngre, meaning the younger).

Little known outside Norway, Berge sen, at 75, is one of Europe's most successful practitioners of the art of running a tanker fleet. He builds some of his own ships and orders others from competing yards, specializing in the immensely economical leviathans that are three times as capacious as mere supertankers. Last month his 149,000-ton Bergehaven unloaded 1,000,000 bbl of oil at Milford Haven, England-- the biggest single delivery ever made in Europe. A sister ship will be finished in Japan this week, bringing his fleet to 1 ships totaling 1,300,000 tons. By mid-1968, when nine other ships will have been launched, Bergesen's fleet will have doubled in size, surpassing in tonnage the entire 1 13-tanker fleet of The Netherlands and matching the present-day armadas of his Greek rivals, Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos.

Out with the Silver Spoon. Son ot a Stavanger shipowner who started out in the days of sail, Bergesen spent 20 years dutifully propping to take over the family firm. Then, in 1935, he struck out on his own: his father, then 72, seemed unwilling to retire --ever. Bergesen bought a 14,000-ton tanker and put it into a long term charter. Using the ship as collateral, he later purchased a faltering shipyard in Stavanger at a bargain price, installed oversized construction docks, then cashed in handsomely after World War II as one of the few European builders who could handle the demand for 17,000-ton jumbo tankers. He still builds for other operators as well.

To avoid high credit rates, Bergesen has financed the construction of ever bigger ships largely from his own fortune. Many shipowners, needing vast amounts of outside capital for new construction, are forced to commit their unbuilt ships to charter in advance, often at poor rates. Unlike them, Bergesen has flexibility, as he puts it, "to build the right ships at the right time, then fix the right charter contracts." Altogether, his wholly self-owned company earned $13.5 million after taxes last year.

Like Father. Envious competitors consider Bergesen aloof and insufferably vain, not the least for his habit of walking the three miles from his suburban home to his Oslo office each morning, while a chauffeured limousine trails behind. Nine years ago, the rivals got an unexpected recruit, when his son Berge Sigval Bergesen repeated a bit of family history: he broke with the family firm, railing that father found it "impossible to retire." Now 48, Berge has his own charter operation called Sigship. Warily staying away from tankers, he specializes in bulk carriers -- many of them also leviathans in their class.

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