Aristotle Onassis: from refugee to a $500 million shipping empire

Transcript

This guy bought six abandoned ships for $20,000 each in the Depression and built a $500,000,000 empire. Meet Aristotle O'Nasses. In 1922, Erie is the 16-year-old son of a rich tobacco trader in Turkey when war takes everything his family owns. He was meant to go to Oxford. Instead, he lands in Argentina with almost nothing. He's so poor, he shares one bed with another man. One sleeps by day, the other by night. Erie takes the night shift at the phone company so he can sell tobacco by day. He keeps pitching the owner of Argentina's biggest cigarette maker until he lands a $10,000 order. Within two years, his commissions top $100,000 and by his mid-twenties, he's a millionaire. Then the Depression hits and ships all over the world are left rusting in port. Everyone's selling, so Erie starts buying. He picks up six freighters for $20,000 each, a fraction of their real value. And when the world recovers, those ships make him rich. So he builds bigger. In 1938, he launches the biggest tanker in the world. Then he orders tankers so huge, experts say they're too big for the Suez Canal. But in 1956, the canal closes to everyone, and every tanker has to sail the long way around Africa. On a trip that long, the bigger the ship the more money it makes. Suddenly the world needs Erie's ships. And when he dies in 1975, the refugee who arrived with almost nothing is worth an estimated $500 million.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.