Manchester Liners
Manchester Liners (ML) was a British liner shipping company.
history
The company was founded in 1897 by Sir Christopher Furness of the Furness Withy shipping company . The background to the establishment was the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894, which made the port of Manchester accessible to larger ships. After the first test voyages from Manchester to Montreal with Furness-Withy ships in 1897, it was decided to establish a permanent line between Manchester and the Canadian and US east coast ports. In addition to Furness Withy, the Manchester Ship Canal Company, the Canadian government, the Canadian Pacific Railway and shareholders from the United States participated.
The line was well established by the First World War . During the next four years of the war, ML lost ten of their ships, including the Manchester Commerce , the first ship of the war to be lost to a mine.
In the Second World War , the shipping company again lost ten of its ships, including the Manchester Regiment , which sank in a convoy in 1939 due to a collision with the Oropesa . Three ships newly built during the war made it possible to resume weekly service in Canada after the war.
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Until the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the shipping company had direct services to many ports in the Great Lakes . With the advent of the container , a year-round container service to Montreal followed, which otherwise could not be started during the winter months. In the 1960s, ML expanded its business to include the operation and management of ports, ship and container repairs, and road transportation.
At the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s, the size of the ships used by the shipping company ( Manchester Liners C-Class ) grew in the course of increasing containerization . Manchester Liners container base port was initially relocated from Manchester to Ellesmere Port and later to Liverpool . Not long after the holding company Furness, Withy & Co. was taken over by the Orient Overseas Containers (Holdings) of the Hong Kong shipping company CY Tung in 1980, its former independence was lost with the incorporation of Manchester Liners into the parent company. The base port of the container service was then relocated to Felixstowe, the container line was completely transferred to the Orient Overseas Container Line network in 1988 and the actual shipping company was discontinued. After the Furness Group was taken over by Hamburg Süd in 1990, the last traces of the former shipping company were lost.
literature
Robert Burdon Stoker: The Saga of Manchester Liners , Kinglish, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1985
