Hailing from a historic Andros shipping family, Spyros M. Polemis was passionate about shipping and seafaring. Alongside his own business career, he worked tirelessly for several leading maritime organisations so that the wider industry benefitted from his knowledge and commitment.
Polemis’ father, Michael S. Polemis, was a ship’s captain who, together with his two brothers, established their own shipping company in 1951. Spyros Polemis later traced his family’s history in shipping back to the end of the 18th century.
He was educated in Athens, London, and the United States where he obtained a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. During holidays he worked in the nearby Bethlehem Shipyard and as an apprentice engineer on family vessels. “As a young man, there was never any doubt about what I was going to do,” he said later.
He served his national service as a lieutenant in the Mercantile Marine Inspectorate of the Hellenic Coast Guard and afterwards worked in the family’s offices in Piraeus, London, and New York, accumulating hands-on experience.
In 1970, Polemis launched his own shipowning career, establishing Polesons (later Seacrest Shipping) in the UK and Remi Maritime in Greece. From three ships in 1971, the fleet tripled in size over the next decade with acquisitions of dry cargo vessels, bulk carriers, and tankers.
A stickler for quality and high safety standards, Polemis rejected many modern ships that he found to be poorly constructed. Nonetheless, by 1994 he had a fleet of about a dozen vessels, ranging from handysize bulkers to suezmax tankers. From time to time, he also showed himself adept at seizing opportunities to sells ships at a handsome profit.
Restless for the greater good of shipping, apart from running his own shipping business, Polemis also threw his energies and expertise into a large number of industry organisations. He served on the boards of the Union of Greek Shipowners, the American Bureau of Shipping, and the Hellenic War Risks Association. He chaired the Newcastle P&I Club and later the North of England P&I Association after the two clubs merged.
Polemis served two terms as chairman of the international dry bulk owners’ association Intercargo and for many years he was vice-chairman of the Greek Shipping Co-operation Committee based in London.
Through these organisations, he consistently championed values such as safer, more robust ships and high ethical standards.
In 2006 he became the first Greek elected chairman of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), the global umbrella for national shipping associations, as well as the International Shipping Federation (ISF). For the next six years he proved himself a strong helmsman during a turbulent time for the industry. Challenges included the 2008 financial crisis and the upsurge of Somali piracy when more than 4,000 seafarers were taken hostage.
Polemis also fought for realistic, global legislation of shipping and to counter piecemeal, regional rule-making for the industry. He was among “the original industry advocates for a ‘levy’ on shipping’s greenhouse gas emissions in response to global warming,” according to the ICS later.
His achievements were recognised by a number of awards and honours, including a Lifetime Achievement Award and a Doctor of Engineering Honoris Causa from the Stevens Institute of Technology, the 2011 Lloyd’s List Greek Shipping Personality of the Year Award, and an Efkranti Award from Naftika Chronika for overall contribution to shipping.
It was Polemis’ dream to locate one of the last remaining US-built Liberty vessels that restored the fortunes of Greek shipping after the Second World War and bring it to Greece as a museum and historical monument. Through his efforts, the last such vessel – the Arthur M. Huddell – was located and successfully brought under tow to Piraeus, where fellow shipowner Captain Vassilis Constantakopoulos undertook its refurbishment. Renamed Hellas Liberty, it is one of only three such vessels preserved worldwide.
Despite being so active with industry responsibilities as well as his own business, Polemis somehow found time for numerous interests outside the shipping profession.
He was an avid sailor and served as president of the Andros Yacht Club for more than 20 years. He was also a successful yacht designer and he built three prototypes in the Netherlands at his own yard, Camara Marine. He was a serious chef and a dedicated producer of a delicious Cabernet from his vineyard in Andros, ‘Cava Camara.’
He was a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, a Freeman of the City of London, and an Archon of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Polemis combined his shipping activities with a passion for history and writing. He wrote and published three books including a thought-provoking monograph on his philosophy, The Sea of Life. He had embarked on the research for his next book, that was to be on the history of Greek shipping starting from Homer’s Odyssey.
But he was already an established authority on Greek maritime history and his research underlined the many antecedents for current shipping activities to be found in ancient Greece. He was a strong believer that an unbroken history of Greek seamanship was a key to the country’s latter-day success in the industry and he wrote beautifully about the love affair between the Greeks and the sea, which he saw as “an inseparable couple.”
