Lamport and Holt was a UK merchant shipping line. It was founded as a partnership in 1845, reconstituted as a limited company in 1911 and ceased trading in 1991.
From 1845 until 1975 Lamport and Holt was headquartered in Liverpool. The founders of Booth Line and Blue Funnel Line had family links with the original partners in Lamport and Holt, and worked for them before founding their own steamship lines in the 1860s.
Lamport and Holt was an independent partnership until 1911, when it became a limited company and the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSP) took it over. RMSP collapsed as a result of the Royal Mail Case in 1931 but was reconstituted as Royal Mail Lines in 1932. Vestey Group bought Lamport and Holt in 1944 and absorbed it into its Blue Star Line subsidiary in 1991.
For much of its history Lamport and Holt traded with the east coast of South America, operating liner services there to and from New York, Britain and mainland Europe. from 1902 to 1928 it operated a significant passenger ocean liner service and from 1932 to 1939 it ran cruise ships.
Lamport and Holt carried cargo for the UK government in the Crimean War, World War I, World War II and Falklands War. In each World War it operated troopships and lost numerous ships and personnel to enemy action.
From 1932 Liverpool City Council authorised the company to fly the city's civic flag when in port. It is the only shipping company to have been granted this privilege.
Founding
William James Lamport (1815–1874) was born in Lancaster, Lancashire, the son of a Unitarian minister. In the 1830s he started work in the office of Gibbs, Bright and Company in Liverpool, where he learnt commerce and ship management. His brother Charles Lamport became the proprietor of a shipyard in Workington, Cumberland.
George Holt, junior (1824–96) was one of five sons born to George Holt, senior (1790–1861) and his wife Emma. George senior was a cotton broker in Liverpool. George junior was apprenticed to the shipping line of Thomas and John Brocklebank, where he met WJ Lamport.
In 1845 the two young men formed a partnership to own and manage merchant ships. WJ Lamport was 30 years old and George Lamport junior was 21. Their original trade was cotton from Egypt to Liverpool to supply Lancashire cotton mills, but they soon expanded their trade to India, New Zealand, Australia, the US and South America.
The partners' first ship was the 335 ton barque Christabel, which James Alexander of Workington built new for them and launched on 17 September. Traditionally the ownership of merchant ships was divided into 64 shares. George Lamport senior helped to establish the business by buying a controlling interest of 34 shares in the new ship. After barely two months, on 14 November, George senior transferred his shares to the young partners, making them the controlling owners.
House flag and funnel colours
A mid-19th-century painting of the three-masted sailing ship Emma, which Lamport and Holt owned from 1847 to 1852, shows her flying a house flag from her foremast of three horizontal bars. The top and bottom bars are scarlet, and the middle bar is white defaced with the initials "L&H" in black. This remained Lamport and Holt's house flag throughout its 146 years of trading. The painting is now in George Holt junior's former home in Liverpool, Sudley House, which is now a museum and art gallery.
When Lamport and Holt started to operate steamships in the 1860s they adopted pale blue as the main colour for the funnel, with a black top and a white band below the white top. Early evidence for this includes a painting of a steamship, the Galileo that Lamport and Holt operated from 1864 to 1869. The blue was a pale shade like that of the flag of Argentina.
In 1932 Liverpool City Council presented Lamport and Holt with the city's colours and granted permission for the company's ships to fly the Liverpool Civic Flag when in port. At the same time Lamport and Holt darkened the blue of its funnels to match the civic colours.
In 1936 the proportions of Lamport and Holt's funnel colours were in sevenths. The lowest three sevenths of the funnel were blue, the top two sevenths black and the two sevenths between were white.
Early growth Lamport and Holt expanded their fleet. Their second ship was a larger barque, the 677 ton Junior, which was built in Quebec. Her first captain was John Eils, who had 16 shares in her and became a minority investor in many of Lamport and Holt's early fleet. By 1850 the partnership had a fleet of 10 sailing ships.
In 1850 Lamport and Holt started to invest in steamships by buying minority shares in ships operated by another Liverpool shipping line, James Moss & Co. Others who invested in James Moss's steamships in 1850 included WJ Lamport's cousin Charles Booth (1840–1916), who with his brother Alfred went on to found Alfred Booth and Company in 1863.
Two of George Holt junior's brothers were apprenticed to Lamport and Holt: Alfred Holt from 1850 to 1857 and Charles Holt from 1855 to 1862. Alfred had been apprenticed to a railway engineer and became head of Lamport and Holt's engineering department. Another brother, Philip Holt, was a partner in Lamport and Holt. In 1866 Alfred and Philip Holt founded their own shipping company, which became Blue Funnel Line.
Lamport and Holt continued to invest in sailing ships. In 1850 Charles Holt in Workington built the first of his ships for the partnership: the 407-ton Cathaya. In the Crimean War (1853–56) the UK government chartered steamships to carry troops and cavalry and sailing ships to carry stores. In February 1856 a Lamport and Holt sailing ship, the 697-ton Simoda, was wrecked off the Dardanelles. The partnership replaced her with the newly built Agenoria which at 1,023 tons was the largest ship Lamport and Holt had yet owned.
The first steamship in which the partnership had a controlling interest was the 189-ton Zulu which they bought in 1857 from Scotts in Greenock. But they sold her in 1858 and continued trade with a fleet of 17 sailing ships.
Liverpool, Brazil and River Plate Steam Navigation Co Ltd In 1861 Lamport and Holt finally committed to operating steamships by obtaining the Memnon from Scotts. In 1862 Andrew Leslie of Hebburn, County Durham built the Copernicus to join her. Each of the two new steamships had an iron hull and was rigged as a brig. They joined James Moss & Co's steamships on a joint trade between Liverpool and the Mediterranean. Copernicus began Lamport and Holt's custom of naming its steamships after notable scientists and artists.
Lamport and Holt operated purely as a partnership for their first two decades of trading. On 18 December 1865 they added a limited company, the Liverpool, Brazil and River Plate Steam Navigation Co Ltd, to own their steamships. However, they continued to own and operate sailing ships under the traditional system of 64 shares.
Until the 1860s the Empire of Brazil banned foreign ships from the Brazilian coastal shipping trade. Foreign ships could bring imports to Brazil and take exports abroad, and they could move between Brazilian ports in doing so, but they could not take a Brazilian cargo from one Brazilian port to another. In 1862 its National Congress voted to suspend this protectionism for the years 1863 and 1864. It repeated the suspension several times until 1873, when the suspension was made permanent.
At first Lamport and Holt was the only foreign company to take up the new freedom. By the late 1860s it was running a coastal service between Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. Lamport and Holt won a mail contract from the Brazilian government in 1868, soon followed by one with the UK General Post Office. In 1872 Brazil founded a Companhia Nacional de Navegação a Vapor ("National Steam Navigation Company"), but Lamport and Holt continued to compete with it for coastal trade.
Early steamships had simple engines with high coal consumption. They offered more reliable journey times than sailing ships, but at a high cost. The large amount of coal that had to be carried reduced space for cargo, so that many longer routes were economically unfeasible. A compound engine achieved much better fuel economy, but generally required higher boiler pressures than were currently allowed by the Board of Trade. In 1865 George Holt junior's brother Alfred Holt introduced , the first ship authorised by the Board of Trade to use the higher boiler pressure of , so benefitting from her compound engine. This increased fuel efficiency, reduced coal consumption and enabled steamships to take more trade from sailing ships. Between 1864 and 1867 Lamport and Holt's LB&SP Navigation company bought 20 steamships, all but one of which were newly built to its own specification.
The last sailing ship built for Lamport and Holt was the Sarah J. Ellis, which was completed in New Brunswick in 1869. Lamport and Holt sold her in 1871. The last sailing ship in the Lamport and Holt fleet may have been the Southern Queen, which was bought nearly new in 1866 and sold in 1880.
WJ Lamport died in 1874 aged 59. At the time of his death the fleet had 31 ships and totalled . Lamport was succeeded in the partnership by Walter Holland, who had been an apprentice with Lamport at Gibbs, Bright & Co. Another long-serving employee, Charles Jones, was also made a partner.
In 1886 Lamport and Holt got its first contract to carry frozen meat from the River Plate. In 1887 the cargo steamship Thales was converted into the partnership's first refrigerated cargo ship.
Also in the 1880s Lamport and Holt extended its trade to Valparaíso in Chile. This trade continued until 1896.
Competition to carry Brazilian coffee In 1869 the LB&RP Steam Navigation Co's steamship Halley became the first iron-hulled ship to carry coffee from Brazil to New York. Hitherto it was believed that an iron hull would taint the flavour of coffee, so it had to be carried in wooden-hulled ships. This was the first time a Lamport and Holt ship had sailed directly between South America and the US. Lamport and Holt became a major operator on the route, establishing a triangular trade. Its ships took raw materials such as wheat from the US to the UK, manufactured goods from the UK to Brazil and coffee from Brazil to the US.
A US company, the United States and Brazil Mail Steamship Company, tried to circumvent the triangular trade by taking manufactured products from the US to Brazil and coffee from Brazil to the US. But the company, popularly called simply the "Brazil Line", made the mistake of rejecting compound steam engines and continuing to use inefficient simple ones. Although both the Brazilian and US governments subsidized the Brazil Line, its high fuel costs prevented it from competing with Lamport and Holt's freight rates. In 1875 the US Government ended its subsidy to the Brazil Line, which for the moment left Lamport and Holt without a competitor.
In 1877 the Brazilian Emperor Pedro II of Brazil awarded the Brazil Line a new subsidy to operate compound steamships. was built in Chester, Pennsylvania and launched in 1878. Lamport and Holt lobbied the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies to stop subsidising the Brazil Line. The Emperor temporarily paid the subsidy from his own budget.
Lamport and Holt retaliated by scheduling its ships to leave Brazilian ports a few days before Brazil Line departures, and would even keep a ship stationed in Rio de Janeiro any time that a Brazil Line ship was in port. Lamport and Holt also waged a rate war against the Brazil Line. The British company thus managed to secure most of the Brazilian coffee cargoes to the US and left Brazil Line ships often sailing north only half-laden. In 1881 the Brazil Line again withdrew from the competition. City of Rio de Janeiro was sold to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.