 |
|
|
|
A Brief History of P&O
Peninsular Beginnings
1815-1840
|
It all started with a handful of paddle-steamers and a contract to carry mails, applying the technology ushered in by the Industrial Revolution to bring frequency and regularity to international communication. Carrying mails remained P&O's preoccupation for its first hundred years, and thereby the Company made a major contribution to a revolution in world politics and commerce.
P&O stems from a partnership formed in 1822 between Brodie McGhie Wilcox, a London ship broker, and a Shetland-born former Royal Navy clerk named Arthur Anderson. They concentrated on business with the Iberian Peninsula, although their sailing ships occasionally ventured as far afield as Chile, and during the Portugese and then the Spanish civil wars of the early 1830s they ran guns, raised loans and chartered steamers as warships and troop carriers for the legitimate heirs to both thrones. Their peacetime cargoes included anything from machinery for minting money to giraffes for the London Zoo.
|
 Brodie McGhie Willcox (1786-1862), the London shipbroker who took a one-time Shetland "beach boy", Arthur Anderson, into his business as clerk in 1815 and partner in 1822, and whose business acumen and experience provided a perfect balance for Anderson's flair in the foundation and growth of P&O. (Oil by Thomas Francis Dicksee, 1850)
|
 Arthur Anderson (1792-1868), the one-time Shetland "beach boy" who became clerk and then partner to London shipbroker Brodie McGhie Willcox, and like the older man rose to become first a Managing Director and then Chairman of P&O, largely on the basis of his imagination and foresight. (Oil by Thomas Francis Dicksee, 1850)
|
|
In 1835 Willcox and Anderson joined forces with Captain Richard Bourne, a Dublin shipowner, and began a regular steamer service between London, Spain and Portugal - the Iberian Peninsula - using the appropriate name "Peninsular Steam Navigation Company". Bourne's 206-ton William Fawcett made the first sailing under the Peninsular Steam identity, but new ships were also built, and on 22 August 1837 Bourne and the Admiralty signed the first commercial contract for carrying mails by sea, for a weekly service between Falmouth, the established "packet" port, Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Cadiz and Gibraltar. This financial security laid the traditional foundations of P&O, with mail contracts continuing to be a major source of the Company's revenues until the Second World War, and it adopted as its house flag a quartering of the royal colours of Portugal and Spain, which has continued to be flown to this day.
|
 In 1835 Willcox & Anderson used the 206-ton William Fawcett, built in 1828, to open their first, irregular 'Peninsular Steam' service to Spain and Portugal. Though she never ran on the mail contract service begun in 1837, William Fawcett has traditionally been regarded as the first "P&O" ship. (Oil by Stephen D Skillet, 1836)
|
 Captain Richard Bourne, RN (1770-1851), Dublin shipowner and owner of the William Fawcett, who joined forces with Willcox & Anderson in establishing Peninsular Steam Navigation Company in 1835, bringing in the Irish and later the Liverpool investors that transformed a shoestring London operation into a major national company. (Oil by Thomas Francis Dicksee, circa 1850).
|
|
The ship making the first contract run, the 800-ton Don Juan, one of the largest steamers in the world, was wrecked in fog between Gibraltar and Cadiz on her return voyage. Fortunately, Arthur Anderson, who was aboard, helped save the mails and Peninsular Steam weathered the loss. Its reputation grew, and it was consulted on the extension of similar mail services into the Mediterranean. In 1840 it received a contract for a monthly run to Alexandria, and to raise the £1million needed it became a limited liability company: The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was incorporated by a Royal Charter on 31 December 1840, and remains to this day one of the few British commercial concerns not incorporated under the Companies Acts.
|
 P&O's Royal Charter of 31 December 1840 was at the time the easiest means of incorporating the Company with limited liability. It has been amended numerous times over the ensuing 160 years, to keep in line with changes in P&O's activities and the requirements of modern business.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
