Seatrain Shipbuilding Corp. v. Shell Oil Co.

In 1972, petitioner Seatrain Shipbuilding Corp. (Seatrain) received a construction-differential subsidy (CDS) of $27.2 million pursuant to Title V of the Merchant Marine Act, 1936, 49 Stat. 1995, as amended, 46 U. S. C. § 1151 et seq., to construct the 225,000-deadweight-ton supertanker Stuyvesant. As required by § 506 of the Act, 46 U. S. C. § 1156, Seatrain and its affiliate, petitioner Polk Tanker Corp., the initial owner of the Stuyvesant, agreed to operate the supertanker exclusively in the foreign trade except as otherwise authorized in that section. By the time the vessel was completed…