An Arabian Adventure

This is the story of one of the great visionary achievements of the 20th century. In June 1967 the Arab/Israeli war closed the Suez Canal and 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, by force of circumstance no longer restricted by the limited width of the Canal, were dramatically growing in size. Shipowners and shipyards competed with each other in building ever-bigger carriers of crude oil and by 1969 some 60 VLCC's (very large crude carriers) of 200,000 DWT and over were in service. There were, however, precious few shipyards or dry docks with the facilities to handle ships of this size and absolutely none between south-west Europe and Japan. Towing these vessels to a shipyard large enough to accept them for routine inspection or repair was cripplingly expensive. The Arabian Dry Dock was conceived 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. This is the story of Gifford S. Rossi's dream and determination to build the Arabian Dry Dock, and of how, despite countless setbacks and in the face of great scepticism, that dream was triumphantly achieved.