This book is about the creation of global bulk shipping by the Greeks. It narrates the transformation of the island shipping companies of the Ionian and Aegean seas into international trading companies, then London shipping and ship-management offices, and finally to global shipping groups. The story unfolds through the paradigms of two main Greek shipping firms, that of the Vagliano Brothers whose business life spans from the 1820s to 1900s and that of Onassis from the 1920s to the 1970s. It indicates how the Vagliano and Onassis enterprises followed and reinvented, at the same time, the evolution of Greek shipping and how their innovations led to the creation of global shipping. It was in large part due to their pioneering activities that at the turn of the 21st century, Greek shipowners still own the largest fleet in the world. Greeks, who carried with them the European maritime tradition, transcended the local, and connected the local and regional with the international and global. In the twentieth century, they evolved as agents of globalisation following but also reinventing shipping practices on a global scale, yet retaining locally-based maritime traditions.