Ben Line Steamers

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The British liner shipping company Ben Line Steamers Ltd existed between 1919 and 1991. Ben Lines was particularly known for its passenger and freight services to East Asia.

history

The beginnings

The company's origins go back to 1839, when the brothers William and Alexander Thomson put the newly built cargo sailor Cararra into service to import marble from Italy. In 1847 Alexander Thomson withdrew from the business and William Thomson & Company in Leith was founded. The main business was initially bringing coal to Canada and returning with wood. After the first trip to Singapore, China and Japan took place in 1859, the main business area shifted to the Far East trade. Further lines were opened in the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, and the wooden voyages to Canada were given up in the mid-1880s.

Company formation

In 1919, the company was Ben Line Steamers Ltd . During this time, immediately after the First World War, the company began to replace its old tonnage with younger, used ships. Since the early 1920s, the company was headed by William Thomson, Sir James Wishart Thomson and their cousin Edward Thomson. The last Baltic Sea freighters were sold in 1927 and acquired, among other things, the two 6500-ton Furness Withy buildings Sloterdijk and the Maartensdijk from the Netherlands and put them into service as Benvannoch and Benvrackie .

War and post-war period

During the Second World War the Leith headquarters were moved to a larger building in Edinburgh. The Bendoran was sold to the MOWT (Ministry of War Transport) as a block ship for landing in Normandy. After the end of the war, the Ben Line had lost a total of 18 ships and still managed six of its own and a large number of foreign ships on behalf of the government. When the company started buying ships for the Far East service again, unsuitable units were passed on to the government. In 1946 the Ben Line had to return certain ships to the, including the Empire Macalpine and the Empire MacKendrick . The government passed the Macalpine on to the London shipping company McGowan & Gross Ltd, the Mediterranean and Atlantic Lines Ltd received the Mackendrick . The Empire Dee was handed over to the Soviet Union at Port Said , which renamed it Admiral Ushakov . The Ocean Valentine and Ocean Gallant were kept, which stayed under way as Benlomand and Bennevis . In the same year, the colors of the ships were changed from black hulls with red changing aisles and white lifeboats, to gray hulls with green changing aisle and lifeboats varnished in wood. The typical yellow chimney and superstructures remained the same. After the Fort Louisbourg was returned to the US Marine Corporation for lay-up in 1947 , the Ben Line no longer had any coal-fired ships in its fleet, as it had already started converting the other units to oil firing.

When maritime trade began to recover from 1947, the Ben Line acquired three Liberty ships and one Empire-class freighter from the government, which went into service as the Benarty , Benvrackie , Bendoran and Benalbanach . Other older units were sold, the Bengloe to a company from Palestine, the Benvannoch to Andrew Weir & Company and the Benalder to the Indian Malabar Steamship Company.

Trade in East Asia grew over the years, so in 1947 seventeen outbound trips to the Far East were started and eighteen incoming trips ended. As early as 1948, 23 outbound and 20 inbound trips were counted and the fleet expanded through new buildings and acquisitions.

In 1951 the shipping company opened its own port office in Shed “C” of London's Royal Victoria Dock. After opening a branch in Singapore in 1953, offices in Kuala Lumpur , Bangkok , Port Swettenham and Hong Kong soon followed to keep pace with the growth of trade in the region.

When the Suez Canal was closed in the course of the Six Day War in 1967 , shipping between Europe and the Far East was forced to take the detour via the Cape of Good Hope for the next eight years , which in the case of the Ben Line meant that the first 1965 with Quick freighters of Benledi class introduced 16-1 / 2-day passages between Europe and Singapore could not be carried out. In order to compensate for the resulting shortage of ships, Ben Line acquired five Ellerman ships in February 1968.

The ACT

Even before the closure of the channel founded Ben Line, along with Ellerman Lines , the Blue Star Line , the Harrison Line and the Port Line , the Associated Container Transportation (ACT). Since Ellerman Lines was the only shipping company in the consortium that also had a liner service to the Far East, a joint venture called Ben Line Containers was formed in March 1970 . Between October 1972 and November 1973, Ben Line Containers put three 3rd generation container ships in service with the units Benalder , Benavon and City of Edinburgh , measuring 73,000 tonnes and which could carry between 2,687 and 2804 TEU.

New business areas

From 1974 onwards, the Ben Line focused on new business areas and began to enter the oil drilling business in collaboration with the New Orleans- based company Ocean Drilling Exploration . For this purpose, a drilling ship with the capability of dynamic positioning was ordered from the Scott Lithgow shipyard . Under the new name Ben Odeco , the drilling ship Typhoon was acquired , which was launched in 1975 for the new company as Ben Ocean Typhoon . The Ben Line also opened a new chapter in the shipping company in 1974 with the newly built Benvenue chemical tanker .

In 1974 the traditional name Alfred Holt disappeared when his shipping companies Blue Funnel Line , Glen Line and NSMO were transformed into Ocean Transport & Trading. The Ocean Transport & Trading again entered into a partnership with the Ben Line, from which Ben-Ocean grew, although the ships operated continued to appear in the colors of the Ben Line. When the Suez Canal reopened the following year, the four major British Far East lines, Blue Funnel Line, Ben Line, NSMO, and Glen Line, decided to transfer conventional general cargo to Ben Line alone under their Ben-Ocean brand . The new Ben Asia Container Service also began its liner service via Kobe , Moji , Yokohama , Singapore and Port Kelang in 1975 with a chartered ship, which was replaced in 1979 by the newly built Benvalla .

With the acquisition of the Sheaf Steam Shipping Company from Newcastle together with its subsidiary Bamburgh Shipping Company in 1976, Ben Line took up a further field of business, which by the end of 1978 had expanded to the operation of six bulk carriers .

Sheaf Steam Shipping owned shares in an oil rig , which in 1977 was wholly owned by the Ben Line company Atlantic Drilling Co Ltd , making the Ben Line Group the largest British drilling rig operator at the end of the year.

In 1977 the management of the Ben Line moved from Leith to St. Mary's Street in Edinburgh. The more than 2000 employees on land and at sea operated a fleet of five container ships, six bulk carriers, four general cargo line freighters, three chemical tankers and five drilling platforms / drilling ships and managed a further three oil tankers from other owners.

With the decline of British merchant shipping, Ben Line joined forces with the Copenhagen shipping company Det Østasiatiske Kompagni in 1991 to continue offering a joint Far East service, but sold all of the remaining ships the following year. By 1996, all maritime holdings except for one oil rig had been sold. Today there is only a network of liner shipping agencies operating under the name Ben Line Agencies . The East Asiatic Company also parted largely from its shipping-related investments between 1994 and 1997 and is now working in other areas of business.

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