Antoine-Dominique Bordes
Antoine-Dominique Bordes (born July 12, 1815 in the Gers department , † May 28, 1883 in Paris ) was a French wholesale merchant and shipowner of the 19th century. He and his sons created the largest sailing shipping company in the world with a total of 127 managed units (ships) into the 20th century, with which his name is inextricably linked: Antoine-Dominique Bordes & Fils (French for Antoine-Dominique Bordes & Sons) , short Ant.-Dom. Bordes & Fils , A.-D. Bordes & Fils or ADB . The shipping company flag, well-known at the time, showed the blue initials ADB , ADB or later ADB & F. on a white background with a broad, red border.
Antoine-Dominique Bordes came from the Département Gers (in some reports Bordeaux is erroneously named as the place of birth) and was the son of a country doctor. In 1826, at the age of 11, he went to Bordeaux and began his commercial studies there. He earned his living from his older brother Antoine Bordes, who ran a grain and margarine trade. In 1834 he went on a trip to South America to Valparaíso , Chile , where he worked as representative of the Bordeaux ship captain A. Casimir Le Quellec (AC Le Quellec & Fils, Bordeaux; shipping company flag: white "LQ" on a blue flag). In 1847 the two became partners, Le Quellec owned two wooden ships, Bordes bought four more wooden sailing ships in order to set up a trading line from the Chilean Pacific ports to Europe, mainly England and the French Atlantic ports, the Valparaíso-Bordeaux line, registered in 1849. Coal was delivered to Chile, in return saltpeter (see saltpeter journey ) to England, copper and guano also to other ports, plus passengers. The saltpeter export was still in its infancy, little dismantling, hardly any lighter for reloading onto the tall ships, not very experienced stevedores for safe stowing of the cargo. At that time, journeys lasted up to 170 days.
In 1855 he returned to France, bought an elegant house in Paris in the Rue du Conservatoire in the southeastern 9th arrondissement and married in 1856. He had agencies built in Paris, Bordeaux and Le Havre . His partner AC Le Quellec died in 1868, and Bordes became the sole owner of the shipping company, which was now renamed Antoine-Dominique Bordes , after his partner had bought his partner's shares in 1869 . Bordes was a visionary and did not let his plans and ideas dissuade him. In the year the company was taken over, the Suez Canal was opened, which in the eyes of many shipowners means the "end" for sailing. Bordes relied steadfastly on his beautiful and fast ships and was right - the end of cargo sailing was still a long way from 1869.
At that time Bordes owned 13 ships between 600 and 1200 GRT , which could transport 1000 to 1200 tons of cargo. They were all wooden ships like Antonin I , St. Vincent de Paul , Valparaíso I , Persévérance I , Chili I , Blanche I and others as well as the iron barque Blanche & Louise from 1868, 581 GRT. He had his first iron ships between 600 and 1200 GRT built in shipyards on the Clyde in Scotland and in northern British shipyards, and 14 iron three-masters ( full ships ) supplemented his fleet. They mostly had Chilean names such as Almendral I , Bío-Bío and Tarapacá I (regions), which emphasized his ties to the South American country, as well as French names such as Adolphe I , Alexandre I , Antonin II (his sons) , which are frequently used in the fleet list. , Valentine I , Gers I .
In 1870 Bordes opened lines to Liverpool and Glasgow and in the same year began importing saltpeter to France. He had warehouses built in Dunkirk , Nantes , La Rochelle and Bordeaux . Between 1877 and 1880 A.-D. Bordes build 27 ships between 350 and 1250 GRT, 18 wooden barges from French shipyards and bought nine more British iron ships, which because of an economic crisis that forced many ship owners to sell their ships, from its competitors. These, too, were mostly named after Chilean place and personal names as Agustín Edwards , Chañaral I (nordchil. Coastal town), Valparaíso II and again the familiar names of his sons, to his I , Blanche I , Persévérance I .
In early 1882, A.-D. Bordes' three sons Adolphe, Alexandre and Antonin are co-owners of his company, all of whom have worked for his shipping company for many years. The company was now called Antoine-Dominique Bordes & Fils - ADB & F. He had not been able to experience the climax of his work because he died at the age of 67 in May 1883. His sons continued his ideas and plans. As the new owners, in 1882 they ordered their first four-masted full iron ship, the Union , from Russell & Co. in Port Glasgow . She was 2234 GRT and more suitable for the transport of saltpeter than wooden ships or smaller units. Further iron four-masters based on the Union model followed: AD Bordes (1884, named in honor of the company's founder), Persévérance II and Tarapacá II (1886). In 1888 and 1889, Cap Horn II and Dunkerque I followed as the first four-masted steel barges , and in 1889 the only four-masted full-steel ship named Nord . The shipyards for the first four-masted ships were Russell & Co. Ltd., Greenock , WB Thompson Ltd., Glasgow and others. After that, only four-masted four-masted barques were ordered or purchased, a total of 33. They had mainly French names and had been in existence since 1896, if ordered all from shipyards in France (Ateliers & chantiers de la Loire, Nantes; Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée , La Seyne-sur-Mer ; Laporte & Cie., Rouen; Chantiers de la Normandie, Gran Quevilly-Rouen; Chantiers de France, Dunkirk; Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, Graville-Le Havre). Since many names appeared repeatedly ( Adolphe I-IV , Antonin I-IV , Valentine IV etc.), it is often very difficult to tell the ships apart without additional information such as BRT and year of construction / year of purchase. Apart from the five-masted barque France , the Bordes shipping company only bought ships from 1889 to 1895.
1890 was a sensation of the first five Master of the world fleet as Stahlfünfmastbark, the 3,747-ton and 130-meter-long France in D. & W. Henderson Ltd., Glasgow, from the stack , as France I entered the naval history. With her own four steam loading cranes , she managed to unload 5,000 tons of coal and load 5,500 tons of saltpeter in 11 days in the saltpetre port of Iquique - a world record at the time. It made the ship the most modern and largest sailing ship in the world (until the launch of the Potosi of the F. Laeisz shipping company , which was in strong competition with ADB & F.). The latter record is still held by France from 1911, which despite its matching appearance (gray hull, Portenband) never belonged to the Bordes fleet, but to the shipping company Prentout-Leblond, Leroux & Cie in Rouen .
The Bordes sailors, although freighters, were nevertheless selectively beautiful, elegant and fast ships, always painted in a subtle "French gray", with a wide black and white band underneath the bulwark and black underwater hull. The white band was provided with painted rectangular black " gun ports " at a distance of ~ 5 m , which connected to the top of the black band. This portenband gave the gray elegant sailors an almost majestic appearance. Furthermore, if ordered, typical Bordes ships had a transom (Plattgatt). They were led by excellent captains and experienced seamen. Home ports were officially Dunkirk, Paris, and Bordeaux, but Nantes was also at the stern of many a unit. The state subsidies introduced since 1890 for sailing ships exclusively sailing under the French flag (not only built in France (for foreign shipping companies), as one sometimes reads) contributed significantly to the growth of the shipping company Bordes. The Bordes fleet consisted of 15 ships with 16,830 GRT in 1870, 38 ships with 119,560 GRT in 1900 and 46 ships with 163,160 GRT in 1914. 60 captains, 170 officers and 1,400 seamen were under contract with Bordes in 1914, half of the saltpetre imports to Europe went overboard.
During the First World War, the shipping company, renamed by the French government in 1917 after requisition as Compagnie d'Armement et d'Importation des Nitrates de Soude ( Society for Shipping and Import of Southern Nitrates (Chile's nitrates) ), lost its name on its 122 transatlantic voyages to supply the French ports with saltpeter and other goods 22 ships through the effects of the war (including the Magellan , the shipping company's only steamer with 6,265 GRT at that time), at the same time the import of saltpeter fell to practically zero due to the artificial production of saltpeter using the Haber-Bosch process - the main source of income for the Shipping company. This and changes in the social status of the shipping companies and their employees (higher freight rates through insurance, wage increases and reduced working hours; no more subsidies) caused the Bordes brothers to gradually give up their fleet in 1926 and the shipping company to close down for good in 1935. They donated their ship models, which were meticulously made after their own ships, to the “Paris Naval Museum” (“ Musée national de la Marine ”). It is difficult to understand why they did not switch to more modern ships and other freight in good time, following the Laeisz model. Perhaps the losses from war and marine casualties were too high. The brothers died in the 1940s.
literature
- Claude & Jacqueline Briot: Cap-horniers français 2: Histoire de l'armement Bordes et de ses navires . Le Chasse-Marée, Douarnenez 2003; ISBN 2914208286
- Hans-Jörg Furrer: The four- and five-masted square sailors in the world . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford , 1984; ISBN 3-7822-0341-0
- Basil Lubbock: The Nitrate Clippers . (Reprinted from 1932, 1953) Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow 1976; ISBN 0851741169
Web links
- Photo by Antoine-Dominique Bordes
- Excerpt from the Bordes fleet list (68 ships) from 1877
- Four-masted barque Cap Horn II (1888-1923) 2626 GRT
See also
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bordes, Antoine-Dominique |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French wholesaler and shipping company |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 12, 1815 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Département Gers |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 28, 1883 |
| Place of death | Paris |