A CENTURY’S GROWTH FROM MODEST BEGINNINGS

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33874, 20 June 1975, Page 9

A CENTURY’S GROWTH FROM MODEST BEGINNINGS

Three years after its founding, the Union Steam Ship Company was well established in trans-Tasman shipping and on its way to becoming the leading ship owner in both New Zealand and Australia. There is no doubt that the outsanding feature of the company in its infancy was growth; rapid, seeminglv unchecked, always fruitful, growth. The nominal capital of the company at its incorportion in July 12, 1875, was £250,000. and less than five years later this had to be increased to £500,000. Behind this expansion was James Mills and a developing South Island economy. Mills, at 21 years of age the manager of his father’s Dunedin-based Harbour Steam Company, bought a couple of second hand ships in 1869, purchased a new one from Britain, and ordered another two from the British shipbuilders who became a major supplier of Union vessels during the next 40 years. W. Denny and Brothers.

The two Denny ships were big coastal traders for their day—about 720 tons each—and were named the Hawea and the Taupo.

Their purchase made the company structure a Httle complicated and to make sure there were no clashes of interest between directors the idea of a single company was suggested. At a meeting on May 31 it was decided to form’ the Union Steam Ship Company and a certificate of incorporation was issued on July 12. 1875. The gold rushes of the 1860 s had died away by this time and settlement was getting under way seriously. The Colonial Treasurer, Julius Vogel, had borrowed £lO million from England for building roads, railways and telephone services, and Nev.' Zealand’s wool and meat was getting good prices in a boom period that lasted into the 1880 s.

So the company was able to send its ships out of Otago Harbour into competion with other lines for the traffic and cargo moving in growing volumes between Dunedin and Onehunga. It proved stronger, and by 1878 had taken over a number of its

While the coastal shipping was being built up the company was working in the trans-Tasman trade. It had two ships built by

Denny in 1876 for this and in 1878 bought the fleet of four ships owned by McMeekan, Blackwood and Co., giving the Union Company control of shipping between New Zealand and Australia. At the end of 1878 the company owned 15 ships, having lost the brand new Bruce in 1875 off Taiaroa Head on the Otago Peninsula, and the Taranaki, which stranded on Karewa Island in the Bay of Plenty in late 1878. In 1879 the Rotomahana entered the trans-Tasman, or intercolonial, trade. She was one of the fastest ships built at the time and was joined by a similar vessel in 1880, the Te Anau. During the 10 months from June, 1882, to April, 1883, seven new passenger steamers arrived in New Zealand waters from Denny’s yard, and until the outbreak of the First World War the Company consolidated its hold on the coastal and trans-Tasman trade. During the late 1880 s it got

into the collier business and the Pacific Islands trade.

The jute trade between India and New Zealand came within the scope of Union Company operations in 1887 when the Tekapo sailed with a cargo of horses on what became known as the Calcutta run. This trade was maintained until packaging methods changed and jute became unimportant. Trade across the Pacific began, for the Union Company, in 1885 when the San Francisco mail service was assisted by an agreement between the governments of New Zealand, Australia and America. When these agreements would not work any longer, about the turn of the century, the company dropped this work. It took up the run with mails between New Zealand and Vancouver 10 years later. During the next years the company’s biggest ships — including the Niagara, a triple-screw steamer of 13,415 tons gross register — were sent on this run.

In a price war which

lasted from 1892 to 1894 the company squeezed the Australian firm, the Huddart Parker Company, into accepting a percentage rather than all, of the trans-Tasman trade.

The well-used Wellington to Lyttelton ferry service began about this time, but became a regular daily run in 1906 thanks to the Mararoa and the Rotomahana.

Then came the war, which upset many of the established trading patterns of the company, and the takeover by P and O in 1917. At the time of the purchase of the company’s ordinary shares by P and O only 25 per cent were actually in New Zealand hands. Australians had another 25 per cent and 50 per cent was held in England.

Just before the war the Union Company had entered the oil bunkering business and in 1921 purchased its first oil tanker, Orowaiti. From then until the end of the Second World War, the company supplied most of

the ships in New Zealand waters with oil from its three oil storage points. A “first” for the company was the building of the Awatea in 1936 which was then the third largest and third fastest ship in the British Commonwealth. It was a luxury passenger liner for the trans-Tasman trade and one of the two ships listed —in the London telephone directory as having direct radio-telephone links with the shore.

The growth of the N.Z. Railways freight services since the Second World War has squeezed the company out of the coastal shipping. It now concentrates on trans-Tasman work and has six roll-on roll-off vessels there now, with plans for another five. The company also operates four conventional chartered ships in the Tasman.

The Pacific Island trade has become the other major activity for the Union Company now that New Zealand is the main supplier for the people living in those islands.