A SHIPPING GENIUS.

Taranaki Herald, Issue 13917, 29 May 1909, Page 6 (Supplement)

A SHIPPING GENIUS.

Sir Donald Currie, who died tho other clay at tlie- age- of 8-1 , was one 1 of Knglajul's great captains of industry. He was entirely a self-made man. His father was once a barber in (Sreenock

- a fact which long afterwards gave Sir Donald the opportunity for making a famous retort to a "heckler" at a political meeting. Was it neit true that his father was once a barber!' "Yes, it is ejnite true," was the answer; "but had your father been a barber, you would have been euily a barber still." Young Donald Currie had a gonius for shipping. He-fore he was twenty hewas one- e-f the responsible men in the* Cunard Company's Liverpool offices. From the first lie set himself out to master the whole of the shipping business. The splendid system of decentralisation he built up in the Cunard office is still remembered by old clerks* After serving the Cunard for a good many years, he struck out for himself, and founded the Castle Line. Beginnin" with a few chartered vessels, he gradually acquireel a fleet of his e>wn, and ten years later challenged the great I'nioii Line, which had a monopoly of the Cape trade. The competition of Jhe Union Line was remorseless, and the management regarded his challenge as an impertinence. Asked one day how long he thought the uneven fight would continue, he replied, "r»til we amalgamate." The sugge-stion of amalgamation was derided, but there came a time when the colours of the Castle Line were painted on the Union funnels. He directed his great business until shortly before his death, doing a day's work that would have frightened many a man of half his age. Besides being a great shipowner, lie was a great Imperialist. He played a leading part in bringing about t liefirst annexation of the Transvaal, helping to foil a (lernian scheme for making that land a German Protectorate. In tliose days there were no cables to the Cape. When the Zulu war came, he organised a news service that enabled him to inform the Government at Home of the disaster at Isanduhi and the fight at Horke's Drift four days earlier than otherwise would have been the case. It wbr largely due to him that Matabeleland and Pondoland came- under the British flag.