Like many other Greek owners of his generation, Tsangaris and brother George gained hands-on experience at sea, serving as merchant marine captains in the 1940s and 1950s. Then they rose to senior managerial positions at the New York offices of Greek shipowner JM Carras.
While supervising Carras’s shipbuilding programme in Japan in the 1960s, the Tsangaris brothers jointly bought their first ship, a 10,000-dwt bulker called Avra Liberty.
