Athena (Nounou) Martinou, the strongest woman in Greek maritime and one of the pioneers in the international maritime industry worldwide, passed away on Friday evening at the age of 97. She was the founder of the shipping giant Thenamaris Ships Management. She was a woman of social sensibilities who kept a low profile and avoided publicity and display of wealth.
In 1971 she made the decision to go into the management of her family’s ships, née Methenitis. Together with her sons, Thanasis, Dinos and Andreas, she founded the company Thenamaris Ships Management. In 1975, the fleet consisted of 36 ships.
In 1991, Athena decided to hand over the reins to her children. Thanasis Martinos leaves the company to create Eastern Mediterranean Maritime.
Thanathan Athanasius Maritimes leaves to join Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Industries and becomes the founder of Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Industries. In 1997, Andreas followed his own path, and proceeded to establish the shipping company Minerva Marine, leaving Dinos at the helm of the parent company Thenamaris. Minerva is now headed by Andreas’ son Andreas jounior and Thenamaris by Nikolas Martinos son of Dinos.
In an interview with the show “Aeonauts” about how she fell in love with the sea, Athina Martinou had narrated: “I am a Cephalonian, but a role in my love for the sea was that I was born in Glyfada and I saw the ships passing by and I told my friends ‘we will make barges too’ and we did it. We were obsessed with it and we did it and the whole family made barges.”
“In this effort, I wasn’t alone. Close to me from the first moment was my husband, but mostly it was my son Thanasis, who from the age of fourteen was doing statistics and writing down how much crew, what a ship needed. My husband, John Martin, loved the sea. Thanasis, from the first conversation was an active part in this effort. I was not the driving force, but I was the man who could make the hard things easy. When you want something, you can do it. I was never a director. Thenamaris was what I loved, not the directing. What I wanted was for my barges to multiply, and that’s what happened,” Athna Martinou said.
Continuing about her life she said “the “Eleni”, it was the second ship, we had no money, Thanasis was finishing high school, I found money and we went to London to sign Thanasis, who told me then, we will raise the Greek flag. The Harbour Master in London asked me “do you know a typewriter?” and I said “yes” and I sat down and wrote the documents, Thanasis took them and so we took delivery of the barge. We bought the first boat in 1964 for £80,000. It was a 20-year-old ship. Thanasis was a Livanos ship, it was a junk, we built it, we made it a Cyprus ship and in 1967, we sold it to the Father family who bought it for $300,000.”
The Athena I. Martinou Foundation profiles the personality of Nounou Martinou
The starting point for the creation of the Foundation was Athena I. Martinou’s passion for the sea and the destination was her contribution to society, the one that is active around the sea and feels its daily presence in her veins.
Even today at 90, it is the love of life itself that defines her. She is, as she puts it, “like the sea, of the female gender”. Her whole attitude towards life is like her attitude towards the sea. Love and passion, respect and devotion. That’s why she accepts life in all its aspects, whether calm and serene, or turbulent and stormy. Because Athena I. Martinou, like the sea, is never static. Bold and ambitious, hard-working and persistent, discreet and low-key, she is the Nun of Greek shipping.
For every act, every movement in Athena I. Martinou’s life, the sea was a source of inspiration. She was generous with it, as she is with those who love and respect it. She pursued her dream with hard work, drive and passion, and managed to win the respect and recognition of the shipping world with her merit.
Athena I. Martinou always returns to the sea to draw strength, and it is to her that she wants to repay the generosity shown to her. Just as the waves of the sea carry us far away, so too she, with the substantial but silent charitable activity of her Foundation, wants to make a decisive contribution to the implementation of projects for the benefit of Greek society, to help it transcend its horizons, to travel, to go far.