Murex Trivia

This past week I've been reading an outstanding "history" / "biography" of the Atlantic Ocean by Simon Winchester, cleverly titled, Atlantic.

Coincidentally, the author talks about the royal purple dye used in classical Rome (and seen in all the movie epics set in that era). It turns out that the Phoenicians were the ones who cornered the market on purple dye once they figured out how to extract it from sea snails found in the eastern Mediterranean, and as it turns out, in the eastern Atlantic, along the coast of Morocco.

There are several species, some of which are called murex shells or murex snails. I have no idea if the Murex oil company in the Bakken got its name from that seashell or not, but it would not be the first.

Royal Dutch Shell was named for the sea shell. According to wikipedia (and verified elsewhere),

In 1833, the [Shell] founder's father, also Marcus Samuel, founded an import business to sell seashells to London collectors. When collecting seashell specimens in the Caspian Sea, the younger Samuel realized there was potential in exporting lamp oil and commissioned the world's first purpose-built oil tanker ... to enter this market; by 1907 the company had a fleet.

And a name, and a logo: the Shell.

I thought that was fascinating.

But then this, which sort of puts icing on the cake, as they say: the name of that first purpose-built oil tanker? Yup, you guessed it: the Murex, Latin for the particular type of snail shell discussed above.

No one can say I don't post trivia on this site. 

By the way, I verified the naming of the Shell story in the book by Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, perhaps the best book ever on the history of oil.