British India S.N. Co.
Ltd
Started
originally by Argyllshire Scotsmen Robert Mackenzie and William Mackinnon in
the 1840s, the early generations of management were Scots: mostly from Glasgow.
Taking advantage of the spirit of the new age of ‘free trade’ and the crumbling
of the ‘Honourable East India Company’, soon
business expanded, with goods from Glasgow to India and on to China and
Australia. When the remaining parts of Burma were
seized by the British in the 1850s, unsurprisingly this company got
involved there too. In 1856 the company was named the Calcutta and Burmah Steam
Navigation Company. Six years later it became the British India Steam
Navigation Company Limited.
This was most
definitely a business which expanded with the Empire. Providing vessels for
service to the Crown in trooping for the Maori wars in New Zealand during the
1860s and the Zulu War of 1879, commercial opportunities soon followed. Mail
contracts were important in this (being paid state subsidies) and the company
also reached into the Persian Gulf and down East Africa’s coast in the 1870s.
Of course, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1867 was highly significant in
opening up these regions to economic activities.
As the company
expanded rivals were taken over where necessary. Again H.M. Government was
supported in trooping during the Second Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 and in the
Boxer Rebellion in China during 1900 - with new commercial contracts in their
wake. However, their main competitor was P & O. Although it has been
maintained that this was an amalgamation, without digging deep into company
records it is not unlikely that this was a case where all out commercial
conflict would have been highly costly, if not fatal to one or both parties.
Anyway, from 1914 until after the Second World War the British India Steam
Navigation Company Limited operated ‘independently’ within the P & O group
of companies.
Less well
covered than P & O, the historical information in this section was found
in Duncan Haws’: The Merchant
Fleets - British India S.N. Co (Burwash, TCL
Publications, 1897).
There are some
registers which are organised not unlike those of P & O S.N. Company. There
are officers’ records books which deal with seamen officers, medical officers
and clerks (that must have been the company’s designation for pursers). Again
they are written up from rough year of entry. However, as these relate to very
long spells it should not be necessary to know the date of entry into company
service accurately. Ten ledgers cover the period between 1868 and 1946. These
are recorded in rough alphabetical order, again with cross-referencing to
further page numbers. However, there is at least one separate index inserted
into the front of the register and incidentally is easy to miss, but which
gives page numbers of entries.
Unfortunately,
those before the mid 1880s can be very confusing to use. The
ledgers appear to have been constructed from loose leaves, some of which have
been used more than once - employing at least two different ways of recording
the information. Not only are some years of entry missing, but the indexes only
deal with some men.
Engineers once
again had their own registers. While the above registers (for seamen) are the
same size as was commonly used (somewhere around A3 or a little larger), those
of engineers are absolutely massive: in the form of A2 loose sheets and held
within ledger covers. Erroneously until recently I thought that here was one
series only, covering the years from 1905 until 1957, in alphabetical order.
Potentially, a great deal of information can be learned about individual
engineers, electricians and boilermakers. However, I have recently found
engineers within the earlier registers relating to seamen officers. From those
that I have seen, at least some are internally indexed alphabetically.
There are four
registers entitled ‘Stewards’ Staff Afloat’, covering the period 1913 to 1955.
These break down by ships’ names and voyage numbers and give salient
information, including home addresses, on all members of the caterers and
stewarding staff onboard.
Also, there
are a handful of other registers that I have not managed to view. These comprise,
one ‘Stewards’ Department Applicants’ for 1916 to 1927; one ‘Supply Department
Applicants’ for 1954 to 1957; and three ‘Cadets’ Service Books’ for 1906 to
1953.
The following
deal with types of information within the three types of ledger viewed by the
author:-
Example of a seaman officer’s service with British
India S.N. Co. Ltd
Example of an engineer’s service with British India
S.N. Co. Ltd
Example of a departmental entry in a ‘Stewards’
Staff Afloat’ book
Occasionally, administrative documents can explain elements of
individuals’ service. For instance, within this collection are memos relating
to the retirement of masters and chief engineers and
officers’ leave (in this case only copied for engineers).
Go to the Orient S.N. Co. Ltd. main page