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).
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