Greek shipowner Harry Vafias was known in his early career as “the Harry Potter of shipping” for being the youngest chief executive to take a company public in the US.
Now Vafias appears to have paid tribute to his wizardry in public markets with a renamed bulker owned by Brave Maritime, the family’s private shipowning concern.
Dry cargo fixture lists this week were made a little more entertaining with the feature of Brave’s 80,596-dwt bulker Eco Diagon Alley (built 2012).
Diagon Alley is the shopping street where Harry Potter buys his first wand, cauldron and other magical accoutrements.
Brave bought the panamax earlier this year from Chronos Shipping of Greece under the name Patra.
The Eco Diagon Alley was reported fixed this week to grain house Viterra for a prompt time-charter trip from Sri Lanka via the east coast of South America, redelivering in Asia.
The grain house, which is merging with agri giant Bunge, reportedly booked the ship at $12,250 per day.
One market source called the fixture “not a bad rate for a unit that isn’t quite as eco as the name would suggest”.
Vafias’ Stealth Maritime Corp, which he founded in 1999, has a fleet of five magically named LPG carriers.
The 40,000-cbm vessels are named Eco Merlin and Eco Sorcerer (both built 2023); Eco Oracle, Eco Wizard and Eco Enchanted (all built 2024).
Vafias took StealthGas public on the Nasdaq bourse in 2005 when he was just 27 years of age — a record that was only broken in 2021, when 26-year-old Alex Rodrigues led autonomous trucking company Embark’s IPO.
But even before the StealthGas IPO, Vafias had already built up a track record not just for being young and ambitious, but also for giving ships entertaining names.
After taking over Brave from his father, Nick Vafias, in the late 1990s, Harry’s fleet featured ships with names like Heavy Metal and Guns & Roses.
Conspicuously traditional names like Sea Muse were chosen by his father, as Harry told TradeWinds in 1999.
Brave sold the 1977-built panamax Aerosmith in 2000 and scrapped the 35,000-dwt Nirvana (built 1975) later that year.
Music has continued to feature during vessel naming.
StealthGas in 2012 christened a newbuilding Gas Esco, referencing Vafias’ alter ego Esco, under which he recorded and performed as a rap artist in the mid-2000s.
After all, Vafias has always been one to stand out.
A 2003 TradeWinds article titled ‘Harry’s styles’ noted that a week after being the youngest-ever speaker at the Marine Money Greek Finance Forum, Vafias attended a party at the Yacht Club of Greece wearing “a black Chinese jacket and Matrix Reloaded-style shades”.(Copyright)
