by John Browne
Throughout my career I have seen how oil, the ‘black gold’, has driven men’s passions, desires and greed. The world has become very dependent on oil and therefore anxious about securing reliable supplies of it. Oil confers powers on leaders who control it but is sometimes more of a curse than a benefit to the countries that produce it.
But in the history of the elements, humanity has committed the greatest acts of cruelty in its quest for ownership of gold. Over half a millennium, this precious metal has inspired intense greed, madness and violence, driving people to plunder, kill and enslave.
One element stands above all others in its destructive power. Uranium is the element which defined the post-war era. It is tied to one of the darkest moments in human history: the detonation of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima. From that dark moment came the great hope that we could use uranium’s extraordinary energy for creation rather than destruction. But the great hope of cheap and abundant nuclear-generated electricity has been dogged by dread and fear. Uranium continues to command power on the global stage as we struggle to control the spread of nuclear weapons. By unlocking its power, we have created the potential for our own destruction.
Human choice
So great is the influence of these elements that they have taken on personalities of their own: uranium, the powerful and the fearful; gold, the alluring and hypnotic; and iron, the strong and dependable. But, in a sense, their story is nothing more than the story of seven arrangements of protons, neutrons and electrons, the pattern which gives each element its character. It is tempting to think of these characteristics as inevitable or even uncontrollable. But each element’s character is determined by the choices we make. We are in control of our own destiny, and the elements are merely the tools for our progress or our destruction. We are not slaves of the elements; we are their masters.
And so this book is not about the elements per se. Rather, it is about how people have harnessed the intrinsic powers of the elements to shape our cultural, economic and social existence, and in doing so have transformed our world. I have seen much of this transformation first-hand, and so this story of seven elements also contains a personal element. It takes you on a journey of my adventures with oil barons in Russia, merchants in Venice, tribesmen in Colombia and computer wizards in Silicon Valley. And along the way, we explore the stories of remarkable times and remarkable individuals – Pizarro, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Curie – and their deep connection with the elements. They changed the course of history. They demonstrated the elements’ latent potential to inspire and equip good men to do good and evil men to do evil. Whether we continue to use these elements for common human progress and prosperity, or for individual greed and iniquity, is up to us.
The American physicist Richard Feynman summed it up through a Buddhist proverb: ‘To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.’9
IRON
Battle of the ironclads
PLOUGHING WITH EASE INTO her opponent’s wooden frame, the ironclad Confederate State Ship Virginia marked a turning point in naval history. ‘The crash below the water was distinctly heard,’ recalled the flag officer of the opposing USS Cumberland, ‘she commenced sinking, gallantly firing her guns as long as they were above water.’1 But her fire simply bounced off the Virginia’s impenetrable iron hull.
During the American Civil War in March 1862, the CSS Virginia attacked the Federal ships at Hampton Roads in Virginia. The sinking of USS Cumberland led to the loss of about a third of its crew in what an officer on her deck described as ‘a scene of carnage unparalleled in the water’.2 The Virginia had been rebuilt from a sunken wooden-framed ship, the USS Merrimack, with makeshift equipment and poor engines. She had one great advantage: her two-inch-thick armoured plate which her opponent’s wooden ships were unable to break. The Union forces panicked; if the Virginia could overcome the Union blockade at Hampton Roads, she could steam up the Potomac and shell Washington. That evening President Lincoln ‘went repeatedly to the window and looked down the Potomac – the view being uninterrupted for forty miles – to see if the Merrimack was not coming to Washington’.3
Fortuitously, the Union forces had been developing their own ironclad, the Monitor, with an even thicker plate of eleven inches. Hearing of the advance of the Virginia, the ship set sail for Hampton Roads. The next day the first ever clash between ironclads took place. A lithograph depicting the conflict, made by the prolific printmaking firm of Currier & Ives, hangs in my office.4 I bought the print a long time ago because I liked the battle scene, not realising its significance. In the foreground the smaller and lighter Monitor darts towards the Virginia, both ships with guns blazing, smoke and steam billowing from their decks.5 ‘No battle that was ever fought, caused as great a sensation throughout the civilized world,’ wrote eyewitness naval officer William Harwar Parker.6
It was an arduous fight: the ships engaged for more than four hours at close range. At first the Virginia fired exploding shells and the Monitor flung back solid shot, but both simply bounced off the iron hulls ‘with no more effect, apparently, than so many pebbles stones thrown by a child’.7 Soon they resorted to ramming tactics, but, by mid-afternoon, with no fatalities, the two vessels disengaged. The ships suffered only dents, and the crews, sealed in isolation behind thick iron walls, were virtually unhurt.8 Sitting down to eat after the battle, the crew of the USS Monitor were all in high spirits. ‘Well gentlemen,’ said Assistant Secretary Gustavus Fox, coming on board later to commend the crew, ‘you don’t look as though you were just through one of the greatest naval conflicts on record.’9
Iron had embodied masculine strength and aggression long before the Battle of Hampton Roads. Its strength is one of the reasons why life is possible on this planet. Most of the Earth’s core is made of iron. As the solid inner core spins, and conversion currents surge through the liquid outer core, a magnetic field is produced around the Earth. This keeps at bay the solar wind, an ionising radiation harmful to life. The first human uses of iron are difficult to trace due to the ease with which the metal corrodes, meaning that ancient iron objects are much rarer than those made of more durable metals such as gold and silver.10 However, iron objects begin to appear after approximately 3500 BC in the form of jewellery, domestic implements and, most importantly, weapons. Iron went on to be used as a bloody tool of ancient war in the form of iron swords, shields and spears.
But for thousands of years warships were still built out of fragile and flammable wood. In the background of the Currier & Ives lithograph, these wooden ships keep their distance, an outclassed and soon to be outdated instrument of war. The Battle of Hampton Roads was proof to the tens of thousands of troops, watching from the estuary banks, of the superior might of the ironclad. At the beginning of America’s Industrial Age, the Virginia and the Monitor were the realisation of the power of industrial iron armoury, a force which would go on to shape the politics and wars of the modern world.
The element of peace
Across the Atlantic, in Germany, the 1860s were the start of an era of great industrial progress and prosperity. The Industrial Revolution had swept out of Great Britain and across Europe. Sitting on the banks of the River Ruhr, the city of Essen was the industrial centre of Germany. Small hillside blast furnaces had been replaced by colossal industrial factories and the once medieval market town was expanding quickly. During the decade, Essen’s population rose by 150 per cent. One family, above all others, was responsible for this growth.
In 1587, Arndt Krupp joined the merchants’ guild of Essen. He was the founder of the Krupp dynasty that would last for nearly four hundred years and become the leader not only of Germany’s industrial prowess, but also of its machinery of war.
In their armament factories, Alfred Krupp, a descendant, forged the cannons for the wars led by Otto von Bismarck against Austria and France in 1866 and 1870. These weapons were decisive. The cast-iron artillery cannons of the Prussian army had twice the range a
nd were far more accurate and more numerous than the French bronze pieces. In 1862, Bismarck famously declared that the German Empire would not be built on ‘speeches and majority decisions’ but on ‘blood and iron’.11 Whoever mastered iron, he believed, would master Europe.
In both world wars, Krupp’s armaments again proved critical. The vast arsenal of the German army underpinned her strategic campaigns against the enemy. At the start of the First World War, long-range Krupp cannons smashed Belgian forts on their way towards Paris. In the Second World War, Krupp siege guns would fire shells weighing seven tonnes a distance of up to 40 kilometres.12 The Krupp’s iron forges supplied the munitions that enabled Germany to make war. But wars were not only fought with iron, they were also fought over reserves of iron ore and coke. Smelting iron ore with coke produces iron and carbon dioxide. During the industrial revolutions, securing these reserves became a preoccupation among European nations. No one wanted to fall behind in this period of unprecedented economic growth.
The Ruhr region, in which the Krupp dynasty thrived, contained vast reserves of coal and somewhat smaller reserves of iron ore. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these reserves became a source of great conflict, during which time France and Germany went to war three times.
In July 1870, France declared war on neighbouring Prussia. Prussia, with the bordering German Confederation states, which it often led, had become an increasing threat over the previous decade. Only four years earlier, Prussia had invaded Austria, leading to the creation of the powerful North German Confederation. France’s once small and manageable neighbour now had both a formidable army and a flanking position on her border. Prussia’s population was growing rapidly and its heavy industries were becoming dominant. By 1867, coal mines in Prussia and Saxony (another member of the North German Confederation) were outproducing French mines by three to one. France was being squeezed and decided to go to war.
But France underestimated just how strong Prussia had become. In a matter of weeks, the Prussian army advanced to Paris. After a siege lasting several months, the city fell on 28 January 1871 and the war ended. Prussia had destroyed France’s military power and, as a requirement of the Treaty of Frankfurt, it was required to cede German-speaking Alsace Lorraine, which held valuable iron ore reserves. Only forty years later, France would fight against the now unified German Empire in the First World War. It would regain Alsace Lorraine, once again taking control of the region’s iron ore reserves. France was now able to increase its production of steel but as a result it became even more dependent on the coke and coal needed for smelting.13 When Germany defaulted on war reparation payments, France retaliated by invading the Ruhr. This not only secured coal supplies, but also crippled Germany’s own industries. In response, Hitler began to remilitarise the Rhineland, in which the Ruhr sits. Wanting to avoid another war, France put up little resistance, giving Hitler the confidence to pursue a series of increasingly aggressive actions that ultimately led to the Second World War.14
The Ruhr’s coke reserves were indispensable in the development of Europe’s iron and steel industries. But the same resources made it a battleground for almost eighty years. During this time, the Ruhr rose to become the industrial heartland of Europe, but the region’s success was also its downfall. In March 1943, the Allied forces made the first of what would become two hundred major air raids on Essen. More than 36,000 tonnes of incendiary and explosive bombs were dropped, the greater part of which landed on the eight square kilometres of Krupp factories. After the war, Essen became a bleak and cratered wasteland.15 But in little more than five years the Ruhr would be rebuilt and integrated into a new political system that was designed to make iron a tool for peace rather than war.
On 9 May 1950, France’s Foreign Minister Robert Schuman made a historic announcement on the radio: France was ready to partner with Germany, and other nations, to form a new European heavy industry community. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War in the hope of ending decades of economic and military competition. By pooling coal and steel resources, Schuman hoped to create a common foundation for economic development which he believed would make war ‘not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible’.16 Regions that had long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they had been the most constant victims’ would now use iron to drive industrial development and raise living standards.17 Schuman believed his simple yet bold plan would herald a new age of growth and prosperity.
The ECSC was the first step in the formation of the European Union, whose twenty-seven member states now constitute the largest economy in the world.18 It was Europe’s first major experiment in supranationalism, forming the foundation of a new entity which was both more stable and integrated. In return for sacrificing a degree of national sovereignty, members would reap economic and political benefits, not least the promise of peace.19
The impact is apparent today in the surrounding areas of Essen, which has been transformed from the ‘forge’ into the ‘desk’ of the Ruhr. It is a comfortable, modern city, home to many of Germany’s largest corporations, not least of Aral, the face of BP in Germany. The Krupp family line had ended, but the name remains in the multinational conglomerate ThyssenKrupp. The Krupp Belt, once overflowing with industrial factories, is now home to the company’s modern headquarters and what remains of the region’s industrial past is now nothing more than a museum piece.20
The unity of the European Union and its predecessor entities has sustained an unprecedented period of peace.21 Nations have been bound together through not only the interdependence of trade but also the security of common laws. It all started with carbon, as found in coal, and steel, as made from iron. It has been such a powerful tool for securing peace and prosperity because of the great extent to which these elements underpin modern society. Iron is everywhere, used in the construction of monumental skyscrapers, aeroplanes and wind turbines.22 And, for me, one colossus stands above all others as a symbol of steel’s might and an extraordinary example of what humanity has achieved with iron.
Sixty thousand tonnes of steel
11 July 2005: it was the ninetieth anniversary of BP Shipping, and to celebrate we held a party at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, south-east London. Cocktails were served under the arches of the museum and guests ambled around the ‘Nelson & Napoleon’ exhibition, marking two hundred years since the Battle of Trafalgar. We sat down to dinner, under the glass dome of Neptune Court, and Bob Malone, the leader of BP Shipping, stood up to give a speech. A lot had happened in those ninety years: for example, BP had at one time owned and operated the world’s largest merchant fleet which, during the Second World War, had provided a good part of the transportation of fuel to the Allied forces.23
Bob finished speaking and we stood to toast the health of the company, but my thoughts were elsewhere. In the car on the way to the dinner that evening I had received a deeply worrying phone call from Tony Hayward, then leading BP’s exploration and production activities. It’s Thunder Horse,’ he said, referring to our pioneering offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. ‘It seems to be sinking.’
Thunder Horse PDQ is the biggest semi-submersible offshore production platform in the world, 50 per cent bigger than the previous record holder in Norway.24 The hull alone is a 60,000-tonne mass of thick steel plate that holds a complex network of 50 kilometres of pipe work and 250 kilometres of cabling. This unprecedented construction was necessary to tap the Thunder Horse field, the biggest in the Gulf of Mexico with an expected production of a quarter of a million barrels of oil and 5.6 million cubic metres of natural gas each day. Only strong, abundant and cheap steel could be employed on such a scale and in such hostile marine conditions.
No existing vessel was big enough to transport Thunder Horse’s hull from the construction yard at Okpo, South Korea, to the Gulf of Mexico. The MV Blue Marlin, at the time one of the two biggest heavy-lift barges in th
e world, had to be modified by widening its hull and adding a new propulsion system. Even with the modifications, Thunder Horse still overhung the ship by 20 metres on either side. Too wide to fit through the Panama Canal and too tall to fit under the Suez Canal Bridge, Thunder Horse rode aback the MV Blue Marlin around the Cape of Good Hope, travelling 30,000 kilometres and arriving in the Gulf two months later.
In July 2005, six years after BP discovered the field, production was almost ready to be started up. But the Gulf is not only famous for holding some of the world’s richest oil reserves; it is also prone to a yearly battering by hurricanes. Hurricane Dennis was the first major hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic season, the most active one on record. On hearing news of its path towards Thunder Horse, BP had evacuated the platform. Picking up in intensity as it made its way towards the US coastline, Hurricane Dennis passed only 230 kilometres from Thunder Horse with wind speeds of up to 220 kilometres per hour. Now, as the storm cleared, the hulking mass of steel could be seen listing into the sea.
Back at the National Maritime Museum, Bob finished his speech and sat down. His phone was constantly vibrating, but he could not leave the table to find out what was happening. I had decided not to tell him what I knew until after dinner. A rescue effort could not be launched until the sea had calmed and we could get access to the platform; two or three hours would make no difference. As we were walking out of the door I told him of my conversation with Tony Hayward: ‘five billion dollars of investment could be sinking into Davy Jones’ Locker’. ‘I thought something was up,’ he said. ‘I’d better go and make a phone call.’