Historical highlights

• 1975 Costamare Management is established by a Greek Captain Vasileios Constantakopoulos. At the same time Captain Vasileios Constantakopoulos acquires his first ship, a cargo vessel of 2,000 tons.
• 1984 Diversification into containership ownership and management with the purchase of four containerships of 1,000 TEU capacity.
• 1987 Acquisition of more, younger and bigger, containerships including six of 965 TEU capacity and two ex-US Lines' owned containerships, of 2,500 TEU each.
• 1994 The first newbuildings are ordered – three 3,500 TEU ships from Samsung Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. to be delivered in 1996. This brings the fleet to 32 cellular ships.
• 1997 The founders and Costamare Management move to their new purpose-built headquarters in Athens, Greece.
• 1998 Five post-panamax containerships of 6,500 TEU capacity are ordered, the largest for construction in South Korea and the first post-panamaxes for an independent containership owner.
• 1998 Konstantinos Constantakopoulos takes over from his father as CEO of Costamare Management.
• 2001 CIEL Shipmanagement S.A.is launched as an independent ship management company, bringing further flexibility and benchmarking to the management of the Costamare fleet of containerships.
• 2003 Five ships of more than 8,000 TEU capacity each are ordered from Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. to be delivered in 2006. In due course these containerships are expanded in design to 9,500 TEU capacity each.
• 2005 Shanghai Costamare Ship Management Co., Ltd is established in Shanghai, P.R. China.
• 2006 On delivery, the latest Hyundai newbuildings become five of the largest containerships afloat and commence 12-year charters to Cosco Container Lines.
• 2006 C-Man Maritime Inc. begins operations in the Philippines as an exclusive manning and training affiliate for Costamare Management and its management contractors.
• 2008 Under an agreement with German classification society Germanischer Lloyd, five of the Costamare fleet of containerships operationally pioneer a new carbon emissions indexing tool, making them the first worldwide to fully comply with new international guidelines on CO₂ indexing.
• 2010 Delivery of the latest addition to the Costamare fleet of containerships, the 8,350 TEU capacity newbuilding containership, MSC Navarino, constructed by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co. Ltd., China.
• 2010 The Company successfully completes its initial public offering, issuing 13.3 million shares
• 2011 Company continues to expand counter cyclically its fleet, taking delivery of nine second hand vessels and contracting 10 newbuildings.^[9][10]

MV Rena

In October 2011 the MV Rena, carrying 1,368 containers, as well as 1,700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and 200 tonnes of marine diesel, ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef near Tauranga, New Zealand. The resulting oil spill was labelled New Zealand's "worst ever environmental disaster".^[14] According to Costamare "the Captain was an experienced Master and had an exemplary record. The ship was fully certified and had been inspected by the Flag State and New Zealand Port State Control (in August and September 2011 respectively). They found no problems.

On 25 May 2012, the captain and navigation officer of the Rena at the time of the incident, appeared in Tauranga District Court for sentencing. Each was sentenced to 7 months imprisonment after being found guilty under the Maritime Transport Act for operating a vessel in a manner likely to cause danger, under the Resource Management Act (RMA) for discharging a contaminant and three charges under the Crimes Act for willfully attempting to alter the course of justice by altering ship's documents after the grounding.^[15][16]

Owners Daina Shipping, a subsidiary of Costamare, was reported to have spent 235 million NZD on the salvage and cleanup operations.^[17][18]