The Anglo-Saxon/Shell tankers

"This book is written to celebrate 100 years of tanker operation by one of the great oil multinationals - SHELL. In 1890 Marcus Samuel, founder of SHELL, was selling small quantities of kerosene in East London. He was also secretly designing a safe tanker to transport kerosene from the Black Sea to the Far East in order to break the monopoly of Standard Oil in the U.S.A. in case-oil. The first tanker, MUREX, was named after a shellfish which gave a purple dye, and was ordered shortly afterwards from the West Hartlepool shipbuilder William Gray & Co. Ltd. A full history of the tanker fleet is followed by career details of all 622 British flag owned and managed tankers. Some humorous stories of company voyages in the Dutch East Indies and elsewhere in the world make the book readable by layman and serious maritime historian alike."--Provided by the publisher.