This essay will draw on similarities and differences between the Wilson Line of Hull and other examples of shipping companies. I aim to outline the best assets of the Wilson Line as well as its setbacks that eventually led to its downfall and compare this to what made them different to other shipping companies, if in fact it did at all.
The time period focussed on in this essay saw growth as well as depression which had undesirable effects on some shipping companies. Factors such as wars had a knock on effect right through the British economy and it is important to note that it was not just the Wilsons businesses that suffered throughout this time. The Wilson Line like many other shipping companies was a family run business which if dealt with properly can prove to be very successful and profitable and long spanning but this does require a strong family unit along with cooperation and the desire to achieve the same goals from business.[1] The company could not have prospered to the level it did without the strong foundations achieved and put down by Thomas Wilson. His duties also comprised of directorship of the Hull Dock Company and with this high status he helped to greatly expand the port of Hull.[2]
The opening of the Suez Canal seems to have been a catalyst for many shipping companies whether good or bad. Fortunately for the Wilsons it had a good effect on business as they had appropriate ships already available to use for trading with India and the Gothenburg trade.[3] Another venture the Wilsons undertook was the carriage of emigrants mainly from Northern Europe and Scandinavia starting in the 1850s, the Ariosto being a regular vessel chosen for this service in the 1890s. These carriages remained extremely popular amongst emigrants and were profitable for the Wilsons, however the outbreak of war brought disturbances to these services as I will discuss further.[4]
The company was able to make the best out of a bad situation with regards to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 by creating an alternative service to Trieste rather than the usual Prussian ports. This worked in their favour as it unexpectedly became a profitable venture and so, what became known as the Adriatic service, was continued and extended. One matter the Wilsons seemed to be able to cope with was meeting the demands of other businessmen and the public and it was this that partly made their business successful by providing the services people were demanding of them.[5]
In 1872 twenty seven new steamers along with a second hand vessel was purchased for use in the Wilson fleet, amounting to forty three thousand, four hundred and forty seven gross tons. Some of these steamers on this particular purchase had been specifically tailored to suit the needs of the many different services the Wilson Line offered, for example, the Rollo and the Orlando were created for use on the Gothenburg service.[6]
Throughout the 1880s the company experienced further growth and expansion of the fleet after acquiring a further thirty four vessels, six of them to be used for passengers. Throughout this decade the Wilsons also re-entered into trade with India, became more involved with the importation of cattle to London from America, an interest also shared by other ship owners at the time, and also joined the company of Furness to create the Wilson-Furness Line in order to provide services from Newcastle to New York. The company also began to appeal more to the general public by offering public cruises and tours of the Norwegian fjords, around the Mediterranean and also trips to the North Cape.[7]
The company seems to have been successful for a long time in comparison to other similar businesses and this could have partly been attributed to having good working relations with their staff. Charles Henry Wilson was known to favour trade unionism and was extremely unhappy to have to join with other ship owners in 1893 to oppose the striker’s demands when he would have liked to support them and this shows he greatly valued his workforce.[8]
In 1903 the company bought out the shipping company of Bailey and Leetham who were just behind the Wilson Line with regards to who were the largest ship-owners and were also a Hull firm. This opened up some new trading areas for the Wilsons by taking on the services Bailey and Leetham had previously provided, and for the same reasons, had reduced some of their own competition with this purchase. This was an addition to other companies bought by the Wilson Line, one of the most notable being Earle’s Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in 1901, coincidently the firms favourite shipyard. Another of the Wilson’s expansions came in 1906 when the company decided to create a joint firm to become known as the Wilsons and North Eastern Railway Shipping Company Limited and its main purpose was to continue the services the Wilson’s had already established to the ports of Antwerp, Ghent, Dunkirk and Hamburg. [9]
Oswald Sanderson seems to have been the glue that held the company together for as long as possible. From him accepting a role within the business to the time it was passed over to Ellerman to become Ellerman’s Wilson Line in 1916, Sanderson had continued to create a large profitable company that had expanded as well as could have been hoped for by Thomas Wilson when he had founded it in 1825.[10] He was the right man for the job and gave the Wilson Line the extra edge within the shipping companies. He already had a fair number of years of experience before taking on a role with the Wilson Line, not only with shipping companies but he had also taken on the roles of chairman, director, member and president of many other companies which placed him in a great position regarding social and business aspects.[11]
The outbreak of the First World War for the Wilson Line saw the government requiring the use of nineteen of their vessels for several different military purposes, but the Wilsons were not the only company to be called upon, several companies were seen as useful for these reasons and it was only natural for every ship owner to grow concerned over ship and crew losses. Regardless of this, all shipping companies were still reasonably profitable throughout the war period and many who lost ships to enemy action were compensated by the government.[12]
As a comparison to the Wilson Line I shall now introduce another company to draw on any similarities and differences. The company of George Smiths and Sons, founders of the City Line, was another profitable family run business that would later be passed over to Ellerman two years after George Smiths death. Both the Wilsons and the Smiths started their businesses originally in merchanting, as did many other ship owners and shipping companies, so it is interesting to see why one business would progress on a grander scale compared to so many others who were still very profitable but unable to reach the scale of the Wilson Line.[13] As with the Wilson Line one of the reasons for selling was due to the fact there was no suitable heir who was willing to continue the family business. By around 1855, fifteen years after the City Line was established, the company had twelve vessels in its fleet. This falls short of the number Thomas Wilson had in his fleet after fifteen years of business which was over twenty vessels at the time of his death in 1869, twenty eight years after the company had been established. As the Wilson Line had, George Smiths and Sons became involved with trade with India, and also Bombay, providing services to these areas subject to the demand. However, unlike the Wilsons, George Smiths and Sons seemed more reluctant to bring their vessels into the age of steam, but as can be seen with other ship owners, they were encouraged to adapt to steamers with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. This was almost two decades after Thomas Wilson had made the decision to bring his company into the age of steam after purchasing steam vessels in 1850. When George Smiths and Sons had just started to adopt steam vessels around 1869 through to the following year, the figures for steam vessels for Hull were phenomenal, as Starkey states ‘Here, shipowners and merchants were quick to embrace steam, so much so that in 1869 sixty four percent of Hull’s registered fleet was steam powered, the national figure being sixteen percent.’ This has placed in context how much more advanced some companies were in comparison to others with regards to new technologies being adopted.[14] Some of their later vessels such as the City of Bombay had been built with passenger accommodation, this particular ship being the first for the company in 1885. In 1892 the company announced itself as a limited liability company with a capital of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. In effect this company has proved to share many similarities with the Wilson Line but seems to be lacking the scale and profitability the Wilson Line could boast, therefore, there was definitely something unique about the business of the Wilson Line.[15]
This uniqueness was not to last forever, and after much tension within the firm in the early twentieth century, in particular with Charles Henry Wellesley Wilson otherwise referred to as Tommy; the decision to pass the company into different hands was one that would shock the people of Hull and no doubt some other shipping companies too. The new owner, John Reeves Ellerman, was no stranger to the business of shipping or ship owning having amassed several other businesses before venturing out for the ownership of the Wilsons Company. Some staff such as Oswald Sanderson and Kenneth Wilson remained under Ellerman but despite claims from them that business was running as it always had just under the care of someone else, the phrase that the people of Hull used, that being ‘Hull is Wilsons and Wilsons is Hull’, is one that was abandoned most certainly after 1917 when the company name was altered to Ellerman’s Wilson Line.[16] The final point to make would be that it was in fact Sir John Ellerman who was not a typical businessman in comparison. He was shrewd and used his potential to the limit to acquire very wealthy companies to put his name to often by making his deals swift, the most notable ones being the Wilson Line, George Smiths and sons, Bucknalls and Robert Alexander & Company. It was most definitely not just a case of being in the right place at the right time, he was very aware of what was happening with the shipping industry as well as other industries in the British and foreign economies. He had connections to other industries such as the breweries and collieries and used them well to keep his businesses the most profitable. He was very different to most companies in this time as he almost seems to be running his businesses single handed as opposed to most companies who would be in partnership with others.[17]
To conclude what has been discussed in this essay, behind the success of the Wilson Line, it would now appear that solely on the basis of it being a family run business, it was actually quite typical of a large scale shipping company and can be argued that family businesses would run their course sooner or later if there is any sort of breakdown with personal relations or conflicting ideas and aims for the business. However it can also be considered unique in its own right as the company was extremely profitable and successful, something that many businesses, particularly ship owners and similar companies, struggled with. The sheer size of the Wilson fleet and the amount of different services they offered not only to businessmen but to the public too was indicative of just how large and popular this company were. They were revered members of society with good social and political standing and the history of the company suggests the family had fantastic knowledge of their business and had good entrepreneurial skills. Unfortunately for Ellerman he did not manage to sustain the successfulness of the Wilson Line for as long as the original family members had been able to.
Bibliography
Dyson, Brian, ‘The End of the Line: Oswald Sanderson, Sir John Ellerman and the Wilsons of Hull’ in Starkey, D.J and Jamieson, A.G (eds.), Exploiting the Sea: Aspects of Britain’s Maritime Economy since 1870 (eBridge version)
Gardiner, Robert & Greenway, Ambrose (eds.) The Golden Age of Shipping: The Classic Merchant Ship 1900-1960, (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1994)
Harrower, John, The Wilson Line: The History and Fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998)
Hope, Ronald, A New History of British Shipping (London: John Murray, 1990) Chapters 16-18
Starkey, David J, A Business Unique: The Wilson Line of Hull 1840-1916 (Unpublished paper, eBridge site)
Sturmey, Stanley George, British Shipping and World Competition (St. Johns, Newfoundland: International Maritime Economic History Association, 2010) Chapters 1 and 10
Taylor, James Arnold, Ellermans: A Wealth of Shipping (London: Wilton House Gentry, 1976) Chapters 4-10, 12-14 of Part 1, and Chapters 2 and 7 of Part 2
[1] Brian Dyson, ‘The End of the Line: Oswald Sanderson, Sir John Ellerman and the Wilsons of Hull’ in D.J Starkey and A.G Jamieson (eds.), Exploiting the Sea: Aspects of Britain’s Maritime Economy since 1870 (eBridge version), p.1
[2] John Harrower, The Wilson Line: The History and fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998) p. 10
[3] James Taylor, Ellerman’s: A Wealth of Shipping (London: Wilton House Gentry, 1976) p.251
[4] John Harrower, The Wilson Line: The History and fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998) p. 13
[5] John Harrower, The Wilson Line : The History and fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998) p. 11
[6] John Harrower, The Wilson Line: The History and fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998) p. 10
[7] John Harrower, The Wilson Line: The History and fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998) pp. 14-16
[8] John Harrower, The Wilson Line: The History and fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998) p. 20
[9] John Harrower, The Wilson Line: The History and fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998) pp. 18-19
[10] Brian Dyson, ‘The End of the Line: Oswald Sanderson, Sir John Ellerman and the Wilsons of Hull’ in D.J Starkey and A.G Jamieson (eds.), Exploiting the Sea: Aspects of Britain’s Maritime Economy since 1870 (eBridge version), p.8
[11] Brian Dyson, ‘The End of the Line: Oswald Sanderson, Sir John Ellerman and the Wilsons of Hull’ in D.J Starkey and A.G Jamieson (eds.), Exploiting the Sea: Aspects of Britain’s Maritime Economy since 1870 (eBridge version) p.4
[12] John Harrower, The Wilson Line: The History and fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998) p. 21
[13] D. J. Starkey, A Business Unique: The Wilson Line of Hull 1840-1916 (Unpublished paper, eBridge site) p. 3
[14] D. J. Starkey, A Business Unique: The Wilson Line of Hull 1840-1916 (Unpublished paper, eBridge) p. 3
[15] James Taylor, Ellerman’s: A Wealth of Shipping (London: Wilton House Gentry, 1976) pp.183-205
[16] John Harrower, The Wilson Line: The History and fleet of Thos. Wilson Sons & Co. and Ellerman’s Wilson Line Ltd. (Gravesend: World Ship Society, 1998) pp. 22-23
[17] James Taylor, Ellerman’s: A Wealth of Shipping (London: Wilton House Gentry, 1976) pp. 33-94 and183-205
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