George M. Foustanos was born in Athens in 1948. He studied Naval Architecture and Shipbuilding at the Southampton College of Technology before joining his family’s business – Valmas Shipping Ltd. – in 1972. Between 1979 and 1989 he was the director and partner at the Seastar Navigation Co. Ltd. and head of its technical department. From 1990, he has been focused exclusively on researching maritime history and documenting the evolution of the Greek merchant marine since its transition from sail to steam. He has served as the publisher of the maritime periodical “Argo” for 25 years and is the author of 35 books on shipping. George M. Foustanos also heads the Greek Shipping Miracle, the first online maritime museum, which he established in 2014 in order to communicate worldwide, the timeless achievements of modern Greek merchant shipping.
In this podcast, recorded in December, Mr. Foustanos talks about the motivation behind the creation of the online Greek Shipping Miracle and the impressive development of the Shipping Industry following World War II. He describes to us the contribution of Shipping over the years, in regards to the union of peoples and the need to recreate these successful, Shipping cooperation examples, on land, because "life is much simpler" as he states.
In this Podcast, we look back at the history of shipping and the creation of the Greek Miracle and discuss about how the explosive growth of Greek shipowners has benefited several countries, especially Japan, which has since become a leading shipbuilding country.
Mr. Foustanos, besides sharing with us the motivation, leading him to the creation of the Greek Shipping Miracle and his love for this truly amazing project, he describes as well the two peculiarities which characterise Greek Shipping.
Lastly, he gives us a glimpse to his work of many years in gathering books and information about the evolvement of Greek Shipping and the way an information should be evaluated, in order for the right lessons to be taught for future references.