Ellerman Lines
Ellerman Lines was a major British shipping company. It existed from 1902 to 2004.
history
The founder
John Reeves Ellerman was born in Hull in 1862 as the eldest son of a German grain merchant. The father emigrated from Hamburg to England in 1850. After his death in 1869, his mother, Anne Reeves, moved to France with the family, but later sent John back to Birmingham for training. At fourteen, John began an apprenticeship as a chartered accountant and moved to London in 1884, where he quickly achieved success and opened his own financial company in 1886.
The beginnings
In 1892 Ellermann, Christopher Furness and Henry O'Hagen founded a £ 800,000 company to take over the 22-ship Leyland Line fleet from the late ship owner Frederick Leyland . Ellermann became managing director of Frederick Leyland and Company and Reeves took over the chairmanship, which he passed to Ellerman the following year. In 1900 Leyland bought the West Indies and Pacific Company with another twenty ships and was named Frederick Leyland (1900) Ltd. reorganized with a capital of 2.8 million. Ellerman sold the Leyland Line in 1901 for £ 1.2 million to John Pierpont Morgan , whose International Mercantile Marine Company sought to dominate the transatlantic emigrant business, but retained twenty non-emigrant Leyland ships from the business.
reorganization
Ellermann then bought these twenty Leyland ships that were not sold by Frederick Leyland (1900) Ltd. Included were the London Papayanni Company of the Greek-born ship owner Papayanni with eight ships. In June 1901, the London Liverpool and Ocean Shipping Company Ltd was established as an umbrella organization in which Ellermann held 52% of the shares. In September 1901, took over London Liverpool and Ocean Shipping Company Ltd. 50% stake in George Smith's shipping company CityLine and in the following month, 50% of the shares in Hall Line Ltd . Further shares were taken over by Ellermann himself. From the end of 1901 a major restructuring and bundling of the numerous subsidiaries took place under the umbrella of the Ellermann Group . The core company of the shipping company was renamed on January 22, 1902 in Ellerman Lines Limited . In 1906 the Papayanni Steamship Co Ltd became Ellerman & Papayanni Lines Ltd.
First World War
During the First World War , Ellerman lost 67 ships of his own and another 49 ships from the Wilson Line, which was acquired in 1916 . Nevertheless, he was confronted with allegations in the press because of his German origins. In 1917 Ellerman had as much shipping space as the entire French merchant fleet with around 1.5 million tons.
Second World War
Also in World War II Ellerman lost 85 ships, including the flagship City of Benares , which was supposed to bring children to Canada and was torpedoed and sunk in the process.
post war period
Ellerman's shipping business suffered a slow decline in the course of the changing merchant shipping in the post-war years, as did numerous other shipping companies, but it also performed pioneering work. Between 1966 and 1968, the shipping companies Ellerman Group, Blue Star Line , Ben Line , Harrison Lines and Cunards Port Line built the container shipping consortium Associated Container Transportation (ACT). In addition, the Ellerman Group entered into a partnership with Ben Line that went beyond the ACT consortium in 1970, from which Ben Line Containers emerged. In 1973 the group reorganized its branches of business, which meanwhile went well beyond the shipping business, with investments in hotels, breweries and printing companies. She concentrated the shipping business on a company that from 1973 traded as Ellerman City Liners . In 1983, with a fleet of just six ships remaining, the Scottish billionaire twins Frederick and David Barclay bought the company and renamed it Ellerman Holdings . After a buyback in 1985 and a further sale to Trafalgar House in 1987, where it was run as Mediterranean Service Cunard-Ellerman , Andrew Weir Shipping took over the Ellermann shares in 1991.
In 2003, the Hamburg Süd shipping company bought Ellerman Mediterranean and India / Pakistan Services from Andrew Weir Shipping and ended the tradition of the Ellerman name in 2005 when it replaced it with its own Hamburg Süd name.
The subsidiaries
The company's history has been marked by numerous investments and changes during its existence.
- Camerons Brewery , was owned by Ellerman Lines between 1974 and 1988
- Ellerman & Papayanni Line - The company was founded in 1855 by the Papayanni brothers, acquired by JR Ellerman & Co. in 1901 and dissolved in 1996.
- Westcott & Laurence - The company was founded as Westcott & Houseden in 1867, and was founded in 1901 by Ellerman Lines Ltd. acquired and dissolved in 1994.
- Montgomerie & Workman - The shipping company was founded in 1855, traded as Montgomerie & Workman from 1877 and was acquired by JR Ellerman & Co. in 1901 and existed as an inactive company in 2002.
- Ellerman City Line - Founded in 1840 as George Smith & Sons , in 1901 by London, Liverpool & Ocean Shipping Company Ltd. acquired and continued as Ellerman City Lines until the second half of the 1970s and dissolved in 2002.
- Ellerman Hall Line - The shipping company was founded by Robert Alexander in Liverpool in 1868 as Sun Shipping Co. , continued as Hall Line Ltd from 1899 and sold to John Ellerman in 1901, continued until the second half of the 1970s and dissolved in 1994.
- Ellerman & Bucknall - The company dates back to a cork business founded in London in 1742. From 1851 to had its own ships and was renamed in 1891 as the British & Colonial Steam Navigation Co . In 1908, John Ellerman acquired the majority stake and in 1914 renamed the company Ellerman & Bucknall Steamship Co. Ellerman & Bucknall (Steamships) Co Ltd. existed until the 1970s and was dissolved in 1999.
- Ellerman Wilson Line - The shipping company was founded in Hull in 1822 as Beckinton, Wilson & Co. and grew into the world's largest private shipping company by the early 1900s. In 1916, the Wilson Line was taken over by Ellerman, which gave up the North Sea services of the Ellerman Wilson Line, which had been maintained until the end, in 1978.
- Polbryt - a joint venture founded in 1928 with the Polish shipping company Żegluga Polska as a feeder line from Gdynia to the transatlantic liners in Great Britain
Ship names
With a few exceptions, all names of Ellermann ships began with " City of ... ", followed by a city name.
The John Ellerman Foundation
The marriage of Sir John Ellerman, the son of the company founder, who died in 1971, and his wife Esther remained childless. He then founded the Moorgate Fund in 1970 and the New Moorgate Fund the following year, which he owned with 79% of the shares in Ellerman Lines Ltd. equipped. In 1983 the shares were sold and the money was invested in order to obtain higher income on the stock exchange. In 1992 the two foundations were merged to form the John Ellerman Foundation . The name was chosen to honor both the company founder as the source of the foundation's prosperity and his son as the actual benefactor. The John Ellerman Foundation distributes approximately £ 5 million annually to around 180 charitable projects.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Press release from Hamburg-Süd ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
literature
- Clarkson, John; Fenton, Roy: Ships in Focus . Ellermann Lines. John and Marion Clarkson, Longton 1993, ISBN 0-9521179-0-8 .