The Lone Star Fleet of Texas

The spectacular discovery of oil in southern Texas on 10th January 1901 by Austrian born mining engineer Capt. Anthony F. Lucas at the Spindletop oilfield was the catalyst for the foundation of the Texas Company (Texaco). Contrary to the usual scenario of a vertical gusher, this gusher pipe was inclined at an angle of sixty degrees from the ground, and produced an estimated 800,000 barrels of oil before it was controlled. Spindletop was located near Beaumont (Texas) on the opposite side of the Neches river from Orange (Texas) and around twenty miles from Port Arthur. Spindletop inspired Texaco’s founding fathers, Joseph S. Cullinan and Arnold Schlaet, to seek oil in the nearby Sour Lake, where they brought in a well on 7th April 1902. The oil was sold to Louisiana sugar planters to fire their boilers from the Texas Fuel Company, set up later that month with a capital of $50,000. A Texaco refinery was later built at Texaco Island on the west side of Sabine Lake at Port Arthur, with access to the sea via the Sabine Pass for ocean going tankers.

The First Texaco Tankers

Spindletop ran dry in August 1902, and Joseph S. Cullinan found more oil to the north in Oklahoma and to the east in Louisiana, and built a 473 mile long pipeline from Oklahoma to Port Arthur. The Texas Fuel Company had 5% of the nation’s crude oil output by 1904. The first marine purchase of the Texaco Company was a 600 tonne barge in 1902, which was towed along the Louisiana coast, but then markets on the Eastern seaboard needed to be supplied. The first tanker of 1,900 dwt was purchased and named Florida, and was converted from the engines ‘midships passenger and cargo ship Hondo built in 1887. The starting point of her voyages usually with a barge in tow was Port Arthur, where she was also registered. Three small engines aft tankers of 3,000 dwt, converted from general cargo ships, were purchased for $450,000 in 1906 as Northtown (later renamed Alabama), Northman (later renamed Louisiana) and Northwestern, and this trio also towed barges. However, the first purpose built Texaco tanker was Texas of 7,850 dwt completed in 1908 by the Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company with triple expansion steam engines by the builder. She was employed in making Transatlantic deliveries to Avonmouth, Wilhelmshaven and Antwerp as well as importing Mexican crude oil. She was joined by the similar Illinois of 8,000 dwt completed in 1913 by the same yard with longitudinal framing and transverse bulkheads.

The Texaco fleet in 1914 owned two deep sea tankers, Texas and Illinois, seven coastal tankers and six wooden, iron or steel barges which were towed around the coasts and intracoastal waterways by company tugs. Shortly before the start of World War I, Texaco started up its own shipyard at Bath (Maine), which built several steel barges and tugs before moving on to larger tankers during the war including Maine of 9,000 dwt built in 1917. This yard was later to produce ten similar tankers during the period from 1919 to 1921 including Illinois and New Jersey, both completed in 1921. Some company tankers had become war losses from enemy action e.g. the first Illinois was torpedoed and sunk by a U boat north of Alderney on 18th March 1917, but losses were replaced by new tankers including a quartet built by the Fore River Shipbuilding Corporation at Quincy (Mass.) during the war as New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Old tankers were also pressed into service such as the veteran Tyne built Geestemunde completed in 1890 at the famous Armstrong yard that had also built the first Gluckauf in 1886 for the German subsidiary of Standard Oil.

The Texaco deep sea fleet in 1921 numbered eighteen tankers, as well as three sailing ships, the four masted barque Edward Sewell, the five masted schooner Keneo (later renamed Maryland), and the three masted Foohng Suey for the case oil trade from Port Arthur to South America. They were joined in 1923 by a pair of tankers purchased from the U.S. Shipping Board as Derbyline and Dungannon and built during 1919/20. In 1928, two further purchased tankers joined the fleet and were renamed Arizona and Maine, as well as five larger tankers purchased from the California Petroleum Corporation, the largest being a twin screw motor tanker of 18,500 dwt, which was renamed Australia and the others became California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington and also of 18,500 dwt. The Marine Department of Texaco had its headquarters at Port Arthur, as well as offices at New York, Boston, Bayonne and Westville (New Jersey), Delaware City (Delaware), Norfolk (Virginia), Coral Gables (Florida), Convent (Louisiana), Mount Vernon (Indiana), Long Beach and Wilmington (California), and Anacortes (Washington). Overseas offices were opened in London, Oslo, Rotterdam, Monaco and other locations.

Oil products were moved from Port Arthur and Port Neches to Amesville (Louisiana), Mobile (Alabama), Tampa, Key West, Miami and Jacksonville (Florida), Savannah (Georgia), Charleston (South Carolina), Wilmington (North Carolina), Norfolk (Virginia), Baltimore (Maryland), Marcus Hook (Pennsylvania), Bayonne (New Jersey), Providence (Rhode Island), and Portland (Maine) as well as Cristobal (Panama), and San Juan and Guayanilla (Puerto Rico). Texaco had built up its tanker fleet in 1930 to 26 vessels of 343,033 dwt, and a year later some war built tankers were purchased from the U.S. Government for use as storage vessels at Cat Island Run, 22 miles south of Houma (Louisiana) at Port Texaco. Crude oil from Louisiana was moved out through Cat Island Pass in barges to ocean going tankers for westward movement along the Louisiana and Texas coasts to Port Arthur and Port Neches, an oil port to the north of Port Arthur and Lake Sabine. Additional coastal tankers served ports and bunkering points all around the Gulf of Mexico.

During the Depression years from 1930 to 1933, Texaco was forced to lay up some of its deep sea fleet, others were sent off on charter to carry molasses in bulk from Puerto Rico and Havana in Cuba to New Orleans and Eastern seaboard ports, and creosote from Avonmouth and Continental ports to the Mexican Gulf, and refined products from Lake Sabine and Philadelphia to European ports. When freight rates improved and more tankers were required, Texaco and all of the oil majors chartered many tankers from international owners to maintain its competitive position in the expanding world markets.

Texas Company (Norway) A/S

In 1932, Texaco opted for overseas flagging of their tanker fleet with a view to worldwide growth, and an agreement was made with H. C. Mathiesen of Oslo to manage the newly formed Texas Company (Norway) A/S. In addition, there were to be bunkering barges in strategic countries such as Britain, Holland, Philippines and China. The American flag twin screw motor tanker Solitaire, built in 1920, was transferred to the new company under Norwegian registry, and the new Nakskov built motor tanker Borneo was purchased and renamed South America. A decision was taken in line with other Norwegian shipowners to only use motor tankers, and two more twin screw examples were ordered from the Nakskov and Odense shipyards in Denmark and were completed as Brasil and Europe in 1934/35. The first of ten twin screw motor tankers of 15,000 dwt from the famous Deutsche Werft yard in Hamburg was completed in 1937 as Nueva Granada for Norwegian registry, and was followed over the next three years by Italia, Gallia, Skandinavia, Britannia, Germania and Nueva Andalucia. The last three of this ten ship series were later laid down after the beginning of hostilities, and only the final sister was eventually delivered to Texaco as America in 1946. All of the Texaco Norwegian fleet had grey or white hulls and the same black and green funnel colours with a central Texaco ‘star’ as the American fleet.

Caltex Group Of Companies

Texaco expanded in the inter war years by buying up other American oil companies with domestic production in the Texas and Oklahoma regions as well as in California. It also took a leading role in developing the Saudi Arabian oilfields. These important Middle East oilfields with the largest known reserves of oil in the world were developed by the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), a joint undertaking by Texaco and Standard Oil of California (Socal later renamed Chevron). However, the oil output was so large by 1948 that Esso and Socony Mobil were admitted as partners. Texaco formed the Caltex group of companies with Standard Oil of California for ‘eastern’ oil markets, which included Europe, Middle East and the Far East. In post World War II years, a large Caltex fleet of tankers of all sizes were registered under British, European and Far Eastern flags.

Texaco World War II Losses

On 18th April 1942, the U.S. Shipping Administration requisitioned all American owned tankers over 3,000 grt, but even before this, Texaco had lost the tankers Italia, Oregon, Oklahoma and Australia to enemy action. The American Texaco fleet suffered heavy losses including one of a trio of tankers built by the Sun Shipbuilding Corporation in 1937. The sisters Florida and Rhode Island both survived, but Louisiana was struck by a torpedo from U 108 on 17th August 1942 while off the coast of French Guiana on a voyage from Aruba to Rio de Janeiro and Santos with gasoline. The tanker was down by the head and Capt. Joel Swanson bravely decided to steer for Paramaribo in Dutch Guiana and beach her. He could have abandoned ship in the lifeboats when another ship was sighted, but unfortunately U 108 followed and completed the destruction of the tanker by another torpedo together with the entire crew of 42 and eight naval armed guards.

The new tanker Connecticut was completed in 1938 from the Bethlehem yard at Sparrows Point as the first of a new class of steam turbine driven tankers with a fast loaded speed of 17 knots. She was also unfortunately lost in the South Atlantic to the surface raider Michel on 23rd April 1942. She was on a voyage from Port Arthur to Cape Town alone with a cargo of gasoline when she was torpedoed by one of Michel’s torpedo boats, which were lowered when needed for action. The crew abandoned ship in three lifeboats, but a second torpedo struck home as two of these boats were rounding her stern and all 35 men in them perished. The raider picked up the remaining boat with 19 men at dawn, with another man dying shortly afterwards. The survivors were taken by the raider to Japanese prisoner of war camps with only eleven men eventually returning home.

The famous tanker Ohio was the next ship of the turbine powered class completed in 1940 and which took part in the epic Operation Pedestal to re-supply Malta in August 1942. She was only just afloat and was heavily down by the head but the precious cargo of oil enabled Malta to continue the battle for survival against all out German air attacks from nearby Sicily. Her sister Kentucky completed in 1942 had failed to get through the Western Mediterranean in June of that year, having been disabled by a bombing attack and then scuttled. Another sister Oklahoma built in 1940 was torpedoed by U 123 in the engine room when ten miles off St. Simon’s island in Georgia. She was sailing alone on a voyage from Port Arthur to Providence in Rhode Island with a cargo of oil products when attacked on 8th April, 1942. Nineteen men were lost in the explosion but she was towed in and repaired, only to be torpedoed again and lost on 28th March 1945 in mid Atlantic while sailing alone from Aruba to Dakar with gasoline, and a further 36 brave men were lost in this attack. Capt. Mathesen and 21 survivors sailed for seventeen days in a lifeboat for 1,600 miles across the South Atlantic before being picked up by Capt. S. Pedersen of Texaco tanker Delaware.

Gallia had been badly damaged in an earlier attack, and in a special ceremony at London in 1944, King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav of Norway visited the tanker and presented three Olav Medals to crew members for bravery. Some 202 brave Texaco seafarers had died during the conflict on American and Norwegian registered tankers. The Norwegian tankers were de-requisitioned on 30th September 1945 but made more voyages on time charter to discharge the obligations of the Norwegian Government as a member of the United Maritime Authority. The last four tankers of the hard worked American fleet were returned from Government service by 14th February 1946 and were de-armed and refitted before return to commercial service.

Post-War Texaco Fleets

Crude oil began to be shipped from Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela as well as from Saudi Arabian ports to Texaco refineries in America in post-war years. Five turbine powered tankers survived the war in Colorado, Montana, Georgia, Delaware, and Indiana, together with a seven purchased T2 types giving a total of thirteen company tankers at the end of the war. A further seven T2s were purchased for the American fleet in 1947/48, but the huge amount of Saudi Arabian oil imports into America in the late 1940s and early 1950s was carried in the Caltex fleet and some thirty chartered tankers. Four large tankers of 28,000 dwt were completed in 1949 as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and Texas, while four more of 19,000 dwt were completed in 1953 as New York, North Dakota, Connecticut and California. Larger ‘supertankers’ of 35,000 dwt were completed at the end of the 1950s decade for the American fleet.

The war survivors of the Texas Company (Norway) A/S were joined in 1947 by the rebuilt Nueva Andalucia, which had stranded and broken in two near Halifax in 1940, and whose salvaged stern section was joined to a new fore section at Newport News. Two Kockums built tankers were completed in 1952 as Brasil and North America, followed by the Deutsche Werft built Britannia of 1954 and Nueva Granada of 1955, and the Sandefjord built Europe of 1956. The Norwegian fleet had thus been rebuilt to pre-war levels, and was augmented by other new tankers during the 1960s, with some transferred from other flags e.g. Texaco Pembroke the former British flag Regent Pembroke.

The Caltex fleet of Overseas Tankships jointly owned with Standard Oil of California was greatly enlarged in post World War II years by the purchase of fifteen ‘T2’s for the American fleet, sixteen ‘T2’s for the British fleet, five for the Dutch fleet and two for the French fleet. A further 27 tankers ranging from 12,000 dwt to 57,000 dwt joined the ranks of the American, British and Dutch fleets of Caltex between 1950 and 1963. This large Texaco and Caltex fleet of 125 tankers in 1960 was distributed under various company names and flags as follows :-

Texaco (U.S.A.) Inc. – 28 deep sea tankers

Texaco (Panama) Inc. – 18 deep sea tankers

Texas Co (Norway) A/S – 9 deep sea tankers

Texaco (Canada) Ltd. – 2 coastal tankers

Overseas Tankship (U.K.) Ltd. – 30 deep sea and 1 coastal tanker

Overseas Tankship Corp.(Panama) – 16 deep sea tankers

Caltex (France) S.a.f. – 4 deep sea tankers

Caltex (Holland) N.V. – 11 deep sea tankers

Caltex (Hong Kong) Ltd. – 3 coastal tankers

Caltex (Philippines) Inc. – 2 coastal tankers

Caltex (Ceylon) Ltd. – 1 coastal tanker

The Caltex fleet was then mostly disbanded in 1968, with half taking ‘Texaco’ names of the Texas Company and the other half taking ‘Chevron’ names of Standard Oil of California. This allowed the company to expand its marketing operations in Europe, while leaving those smaller Caltex companies east of the Suez Canal to continue with that brand name.

Overseas Tankship (U.K.) Ltd.

A British flag Caltex fleet was established on 2nd August 1950 as the Overseas Tankship (U.K.) Ltd. The cable address of OTUK was used to hire the first British seafarers and remained in use for over twenty years. The first tanker to enter OTUK service was the ‘T2’ type Quaker Hill, later renamed Caltex Karachi, on bareboat charter on 21st August 1950. Another eleven ‘T2’s were accepted on bareboat charter before the year end, with three ‘T2’s purchased and renamed Caltex Melbourne, Caltex Adelaide and Caltex Glasgow. All except one of the bareboat chartered ‘T2’s had been purchased by 1952. In late 1950 and early 1951, orders were placed with British yards for four new motor product tankers of 12,300 dwt, Caltex Kenya, Caltex Tanganyika, Caltex Delhi and Caltex Calcutta, and five turbine powered tankers of 17,500 dwt, Caltex Liverpool, Caltex Canberra, Caltex Bahrain, Caltex Manchester and Caltex Perth. Caltex Bahrain as the flagship of the fleet took part in the Coronation Naval Review at Spithead on 15th June 1953 and her Master, Capt. B. Wheeler, attended a sherry party later on the Royal yacht Britannia.

By the end of 1955, there were sixteen owned ‘T2’ types and nine new tankers under the British flag, together with five ‘T2’s on bareboat charter and eight other tankers on time charter. Some seven million tonnes of cargo was carried worldwide with Caltex Sydney discharging the first crude oil cargo to the Kurnell refinery in New South Wales on 3rd October 1955. Two turbine tankers of 18,200 dwt were then completed in British yards as Caltex Newcastle and Caltex Edinburgh, and contracts were signed for two ‘supertankers’ of 32,000 dwt with Belgian yards.

At the beginning of the momentous 1960s decade, OTUK had a fleet of nineteen owned ‘T2’ types, and thirteen new tankers, a coastal tanker of 2,900 dwt and thirty tankers on time charter. In only ten years, the fleet had grown to one of 63 tankers of 1.3 million dwt. The Japanese built Texaco Plymouth and Texaco Brisbane entered service during 1960/61, followed by Texaco Greenwich and Texaco Southampton in 1962/63. Six owned ‘T2’s were sent for scrapping and two more were converted into LPG carriers. Eleven ‘T2’s remained in service, but six were sold for scrapping in 1965/67 and the remaining five, Caltex Saigon, Caltex Melbourne, Caltex Wellington, Caltex Bombay and Caltex Rome, were jumboised. This was carried out by the Hitachi Shipbuilding and Engineering yards, each tanker having an identical new forepart forward of the aft pumproom, and the existing navigating bridge moved aft to increase their deadweight to 23,300 tonnes.

The last original design ‘T2’ in OTUK service was Caltex London when she was sold for scrapping in July, 1967. On 1st May 1967, the Caltex Group of companies was reorganized with ownership of the OTUK fleet transferred to Texaco Inc. together with all sea and shore staffs. The name of the British company was changed on 20th November, 1967 to Texaco Overseas Tankship Ltd. (TOTL) together with name changes to ‘Texaco’ prefixes for the fleet shortly afterwards. The British flag Caltex fleet had traded worldwide, with Caltex Saigon discharging the first crude oil cargo to a new refinery at Vizakhapatnam (India) in February 1957, and Caltex Dublin discharged the first crude oil to the new refinery at Whitegate (Cork) in April 1959.

Regent Petroleum Tankship Company

This company had its origins in the interwar years as the Bulk Storage and Shipment Department of Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd. (TLL). At that time the deep sea fleet comprised only four or five time chartered product tankers in the 10,000 to 12,000 dwt range operating between Port of Spain and the U.K. In 1938, Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd. completed the 8,000 dwt product tanker La Carriere to carry oil cargoes from Trinidad to the Caribbean area, and the smaller coastal tanker Iere of 1,000 dwt for similar service. Iere was the original native name for Trinidad and is reputed to mean ‘Land of the Humming Bird’. The chartered tanker Regent Tiger was the first Allied tanker to be sunk by enemy action in September, 1939 in the Western Approaches, and La Carriere met the same fate when torpedoed and sunk on 24th February 1942 to the south of Puerto Rico while on a voyage from New York to Trinidad in ballast. Iere served as a water carrier at Hong Kong, and she and the chartered Regent Panther were the only war survivors.

In 1948, Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd. decided to have its own tanker subsidiary company and formed the Regent Petroleum Tankship Co. Ltd. Beginning with one tanker, Regent Hawk, the fleet gradually increased and with the addition of Regent Royal, Regent Eagle and Regent Falcon, became an established tanker fleet. The TLL company was acquired by Texaco Inc. in 1956 and larger tankers, Regent Liverpool, Regent Pembroke, Texaco Westminster and Texaco Frankfurt, joined the British fleet. Regent Liverpool discharged the first crude oil cargo at the new Pembroke refinery at Milford Haven on 22nd July 1964. As a result of the Caltex reorganization in late 1967, Texaco Inc owned two British fleets in OTUK and the Regent Petroleum Tankship Company. The merging of the two fleets was the next logical step on 30th December 1969 together with all sea and shore staffs. This brought new trading areas for the ships and seafarers with three new ‘Ghent’ class tankers of 24,700 dwt and no less than ten VLCCs during the period from 1969 to 1974. Texaco Westminster was badly damaged on 25th October 1973 at Palermo when the floating dock in which she was undergoing repairs broke adrift and grounded. By the end of 1974, the British flag fleet consisted of thirty owned tankers and 33 chartered tankers, a total of 63 tankers of 7.5 million tonnes dwt trading worldwide and lifting over 40 million tonnes of crude oil and oil products per annum.

In 1982, there were twenty tankers including five VLCCs under the British flag of Texaco Overseas Tankship Ltd. (TOTL) and Tankship Finance (U.K.) Ltd. The American flag fleet of Texaco Inc. owned fourteen tankers, with another 28 tankers including ten VLCCs under the Panamanian flag. Texaco Norway A/S owned nine tankers including one VLCC, and there were two further tankers under the Saudi Arabian flag in the former VLCCs Texaco Copenhagen and Texaco Denmark renamed as Sipca Damman and Sipca Jeddah respectively. There were still nine jumboised ‘T2’ types in service, some of which would not be scrapped until they had completed forty years of service. Indeed, Texaco Minnesota and Texaco Mississippi were still in service until the end of the 1980s decade. The last Texaco tankers under the British flag were the sister Aframaxes Star Westminster and Star Windsor of 88,425 dwt, renamed from their Texaco names in 1990, and sold off in 1995. They had single hulls and had been built by IHI at Aioi in Japan in 1980/81 and had service speeds of 15 knots from Pielstick diesels of 15,000 bhp.

Texaco Inc. American Fleet 1960-1995

In 1960, the Texaco Inc. fleet comprised 91 tankers of 1.922 million dwt, serving the main Port Arthur refinery at Texaco Island, with the second busiest being the Eagle Point refinery on the Delaware river, and the third busiest was at Wilmington near Los Angeles serving the West coast. The American fleet had ‘Texaco’ prefixes added to their American States names in 1960, with Maryland being the first to become Texaco Maryland. The latest class of a dozen bridge ‘midships engines aft tankers of 46,000 dwt had just been completed in American, Swedish and Japanese yards for Texaco (Panama) Inc. as Alaska, Anacortes, Brighton, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Oregon, Santiago, Trinidad, Utah and Virginia and were soon given their ‘Texaco’ prefixes to their names.

The fleet was then improved with newer and bigger tankers as well as the jumboising of several of the older ‘T2’s by the addition of new mid sections, and in some cases deepening and rebuilding with the ‘midships bridge structure bodily moved aft. Similar operations were also done on another pair at the Clyde yard of Blythswood Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. for the British fleet. Larger tankers such as Texaco Maracaibo of 91,000 dwt was completed in 1965 by the Belfast yard of Harland & Wolff Ltd., as well as two product tankers of 29,340 dwt in Texaco New Mexico and Texaco Missouri. The acquisition of the Seaboard Oil Company with oil reserves in South America saw the American fleet trading to that continent, and a majority interest was also purchased in 1966 in the West German oil company Deutsche Erdol A.G. to increase European trading. By the end of the decade the company had entered the VLCC era in 1969 with the delivery of the first of four VLCCs of 206,000 dwt from the Howaldtswerke yard in Hamburg as Texaco Hamburg.

In 1970, Texaco Inc. had a deep sea fleet of 146 owned or time chartered tankers of 7.23 Mdwt. A further twenty VLCCs were built for the company in British, Japanese, German, Dutch and Spanish yards of over 200,000 dwt for worldwide trading up to 1977, and 26 more VLCCs were taken on time charter. A further three were purchased from the ‘R’ class of the large fleet of Danish independent A.P. Moller-Maersk as Richard Maersk, Roy Maersk and Rosa Maersk. However, restructuring following the slump in demand after the OPEC price rises in 1973 caused a sharp drop in the numbers of the fleet with a total worldwide fleet of only sixty tankers in 1982. Thirty tankers of over 2 million dwt had been scrapped in a vast downsizing of the fleet.

The American and Panamanian fleets did not escape their share of maritime disasters, especially the loss of the lube tanker Texaco Caribbean of 20,545 dwt on 11th January 1971 in the English Channel. She collided with the Peruvian cargo ship Paracas and was cut in two off the Varne Bank at Dover. A giant explosion ripped the tanker apart as there were no inert gas systems in those days. Capt. Franco Giurini and seven crew members lost their lives in the ‘midships section, whereas those in the stern section survived. Unfortunately, much further loss of life of 43 lives occurred in the next few days when the German owned Brandenburg and the Greek owned Niki had their bottoms ripped out after colliding and running into the wreckage of the submerged Texaco tanker. Texaco Oklahoma of 32,965 dwt broke up two months later on 27th March 1971 when 150 miles northeast of Cape Hatteras in heavy weather with huge seas causing her to break in two between two giant crests of waves. The ordeal of the 34 survivors in the stern section was compounded when the forepart of the ship came around and collided with the stern section, destroying the lifeboats. Capt. Richard Hopkins and ten crew members then lost their lives when the forepart sank, and the stern section survivors were forced into the water when this part also later sank. Fortunately, the lengthened ‘T2’ type tanker Sasstown was able to rescue 13 survivors from the water later that day and took them to New York. A memorial sundial to the lost crew members was erected at Port Arthur as they all hailed from the Gulf coast area.

On 6th October 1975, Texaco Inc. began ship to ship transfer operations in the Gulf of Mexico 70 miles south of Sabine Pass at South Sabine Point. The service was set up to reduce the voyage time and expedite the delivery of crude oil into Texaco Island on Sabine Lake. Four Yokohama type fenders, a workboat and many cargo hoses were under the overall direction of Texaco’s first Mooring Master, Capt. J.D. Welch. Texaco Brighton offloaded her 46,000 tonnes of crude oil to the storage VLCC Texaco Frankfurt in the first transfer. By 1981, an average of almost half a million barrels of crude per day was transferred to storage tankers using seven Mooring Masters. As a result of the OPEC price rises in 1973 and the consequent less demand for oil, Texaco Inc. put all of its tankers above 80,000 dwt on slow steaming to reduce costs while the future tonnage requirements could be worked out.

The bridge ‘midships engines aft tanker Texaco North Dakota of 20,480 dwt struck an unlit oil rig under construction in the Gulf of Mexico on 21st August 1980 causing hull damage and a fire to break out, which was extinguished the next day. She was freed from the rig eight days later and arrived later that day at Port Arthur. She was declared a constructive total loss and sold for scrapping, fortunately no loss of life or injuries were sustained onboard. In 1981, the Texaco Inc. fleet had been reduced by almost thirty tankers of two million dwt tonnes, and six further VLCCs were put into deep lay-up status in the Johore River in Malaysia in 1982. Texaco Nederland, Texaco Ireland, Texaco Brasil, Texaco Spain, Texaco Panama and Texaco South America were laid up securely side by side in alternate bow and stern positions, with Texaco Nederland as the ‘mother ship’ with portable power units on her poop. Two of the six were broken up in 1983 less than ten years after their completion, but the remaining quartet were to stay laid up there for five more years until sold to Taiwan breakers. Six other Texaco tankers were also laid up in the Johore Strait, and many more were waiting at the Johore Shoal buoy in the Singapore Strait pending decisions on layup status.

In April 1987, the tankers of the Getty Marine Corporation were taken over into the Texaco Panama Inc. fleet and given ‘Texaco’ prefixes to their names. On 10th August 1987, the VLCC Texaco Caribbean struck a floating mine eight miles northeast of Fujairah while she was coming to anchor. She suffered a large hole twenty feet square below the waterline and her cargo was offloaded to another chartered VLCC, D’Artagnan. The gas trades could also be dangerous with pressure problems experienced at the terminal loading and discharging arms by the LPG carrier Texaco Colon ex Texaco Puerto Rico, completed in 1966 and operated in the Caribbean from Trinidad.

In 1990, with the establishment of OPA90 pollution legislation and the growing threat of unlimited liability on American flag tankers, tugs and barges, the names of the fleet were changed to have ‘Star’ prefixes instead of ‘Texaco’ prefixes. In the same year, the shore staff of the Marine Department of Texaco at Port Arthur was reorganized and slimmed down in its work to administer the fleet and the remaining 1,444 seagoing employees. The Texaco long haul crude oil requirements were drastically reduced resulting in surplus VLCCs, and also as a consequence less product tanker demand occurred. The Marine Department then initiated discussions in the early 1990s with a number of independent oil tanker companies for merging oil cargo movements and putting pooling vessel arrangements into place.

Stentex Agreement

In April 1995, the Texaco fleet stood at twenty owned product and crude carriers with many more on charter. The name prefixes of the fleet were now ‘Star’, and in a cost cutting measure Texaco concluded a deal with independent tanker owner Stena Bulk of Sweden. A strategic alliance was formed between the two companies to co-ordinate the international oil transportation requirements of Texaco. In a series of vessel sales and management agreements with Northern Marine Management of Glasgow, the Stena subsidiary in the U.K., a joint venture company Stentex was formed as the Texaco fleet managers handling the international transportation and chartering of tankers. An agreement was also reached with Keystone Shipping of the U.S.A. based in Pennsylvania to establish an alliance partner for home American tanker fleet requirements. Consequently, Texaco Marine Services Inc. at Port Arthur was closed down with immediate effect. By 2002, only the tanker Star Ohio of 143,750 dwt completed in 1992 by the Samsung yard at Koje Island was registered under Texaco Panama Inc. and was managed by Stena. The Texaco North Sea bow loading shuttle tanker Aberdeen of 87,055 dwt completed in Spain in 1996 offloaded the FPSO Captain and was registered under Getty Maritime Inc. and managed by Northern Marine Management of Nassau. Thus, the great Texaco tanker fleet had completed a century of worldwide operations.

Today, a fleet of 85 double hulled Suezmax, Aframax, Panamax, Shuttle and Handymax tankers of Stena Bulk with their smart and colourful hull liveries are available to handle the crude oil and products transportation requirements of Texaco. This total includes a dozen ‘PMax’ ice classed tankers of 65,000 dwt and three large LNG carriers. Some have ‘Stena’ and others have ‘Sonangol’ prefixes to their names, and together with two product tankers on charter from Keystone Shipping Inc., Texaco are well provided with worldwide strategic partner tankers.