Time’s reporter is aboard the brand-new Esso of The Netherlands tanker Europoort, a very large crude carrier. The Europoort has many luxuries for the crewman.

Since the Torrey Canyon disaster in 1967, the world’s ever bigger oil tankers have drawn worse and worse publicity. Viewers with alarm see them as oil-leaking time bombs that defile the seas with toxic black goo. Tankermen have a different perspective. Sailing calmly through gales of criticism, they supply theā€¦