Welcome to the deep dive. Today we are we're
looking at a story that basically serves as the
biography of the British Empire's industrial
rise. Right. And it's fall. Yeah. And it's terrifying
stumble through the 20th century. Plus this really
strange kind of ghostly afterlife it has in the
modern world. We're talking about. Ellermann
Lines. Ellermann Lines. It is a name that for
a solid hundred years was totally synonymous
with the ocean itself. Literally everywhere.
Everywhere. Like if you were standing on a dock
in Liverpool or Bombay or Cape Town, anywhere
between say 1892 and 1980, you would have seen
their ships. They were the absolute titans of
the trade route. And yet, unless you're a maritime
historian, or maybe you happen to live on a very
specific street in Amsterdam, you probably haven't
heard of them. I mean, this isn't like Cunard
or the White Star Line. No, they didn't have
the Titanic. Exactly. They didn't have the Titanic.
They didn't have the Queen Mary. They were the
workhorses. The cargo haulers. But the scale
of this operation was just mind boggling. We
are talking about a company that started as an
800 ,000 pound startup. Which was huge back then.
Massive. And they became one of the largest fleets
on the planet, lost nearly everything in World
War I. Rebuilt it. Rebuilt it, yeah. Then lost
it all again in World War II. Rebuilt it again.
Rebuilt it again. And then they just sort of
vanished. Vanished until they reappeared out
of nowhere in 2021. Which is crazy. It's a corporate
resurrection that completely defies the usual
logic of business history. It really does. So
that's our mission today. We are going to trace
this arc from the Victorian boardroom to the
U -boat wolf packs. Through the golden age of
cargo passenger travel. Right. All the way to
the shipping container crisis of the 2020s. We
need to understand how a company survives the
total destruction of its assets not once, but
twice. And to really understand that resilience,
you have to wrap your head around the sheer magnitude
of what they built. It's hard to visualize. It
is. We aren't talking about a few boats shuttling
coal across the English Channel here. By the
early 20th century, Ellermann Lines dominated
the Mediterranean. And the Near East. The Near
East, yes. They had these ships with names like
City of Paris, City of London, City of Calcutta.
The City of Ships, yeah. These were the veins
and arteries of the global economy before air
freight even existed. And we're gonna see that
by looking through the historical records, the
fleet lists. The corporate histories. All of
it. It paints a picture of total dominance. So
let's go back to the source. The year is 1892.
The Victorian era is peaking. The map of the
world is, you know, painted pink for the British
Empire. Very pink. And we have this trio of financiers
who decide to just... Jump into the shipping
game. John Ellerman, Christopher Furness, and
Henry O 'Hagan. It's an interesting mix of guys.
You have O 'Hagan and Furness, who are already
established players in the market. But the central
character here is definitely John Ellerman. Oh,
without a doubt. And the funny thing is, he wasn't
a sailor. Right. Not at all. He was an accountant.
A financier. He looked at ships. And he didn't
see romance or the high seas. He just saw balance
sheets. Which probably explains why they didn't
start small. The records show they incorporated
with a capital of 800 ,000 pounds. It's staggering.
Now, whenever we see Victorian money, it's really
hard to contextualize for you listening today,
but 800 ,000 pounds in 1892 is a war chest. It's
an immense sum. To put it in perspective, a highly
skilled tradesman back then might earn maybe
100 pounds a year. Right. So this capital allowed
them to completely bypass that scrappy startup
phase. There was no bootstrapping here. They
just bought their way in. They immediately purchased
the assets of Frederick Leyland & Co., which
gave them a working fleet of 22 vessels right
out of the gate. It's like a hostile takeover
level of entry. They bought a working airline,
essentially, rather than buying a single plane.
Exactly. And the management dynamics from the
start were fascinating. Initially, Christopher
Furness was the chairman and Ellerman was the
managing director. But Ellerman was clearly the
shark in the tank. Oh, absolutely. By 1893, just
one year later, Ellerman had taken the chairmanship
for himself. And he was only 31 years old. A
31 -year -old chairman of a major shipping line.
and he immediately starts playing this game of
real -life monopoly. Relentless expansion. The
expansion strategy detailed in the corporate
history is just aggressive acquisition. In 1900,
they bought the West Indian and Pacific Steamship
Company. Adding 20 ships to the fleet in one
go. Right, but the real test of Ellermann's acumen,
and this is a story that I feel gets overlooked
in business schools. It's brilliant. It came
in 1901. This is the J .P. Morgan connection.
Yes, the American banker. JP Morgan was trying
to buy up basically everything. He was attempting
to monopolize North Atlantic shipping. He formed
this massive trust called the International Marine
Mercantile Company. Right. His goal was to totally
control the rates and routes between the U .S.
and Europe. So he approached Ellerman to buy
the Leyland Line. So you have the biggest banker
in America coming over to buy out the British
fleet. That must have caused immense anxiety
in London. Oh, huge anxiety. It was seen as a
direct threat. to British national security.
The Americans buying the merchant fleet. But
look at what Ellerman actually does. He agrees
to sell. He does. He sells the Leyland business
to Morgan for a massive, massive profit. But
and this is the genius part. He retains the chairmanship
for a little while. And more importantly, he
keeps 20 of the ships for himself. Along with
the Mediterranean routes. Exactly. The calm,
lucrative Mediterranean routes, which Morgan
wasn't interested in anyway. Morgan wanted the
Atlantic. So Ellermann sells the company, takes
Morgan's cash, keeps the best assets, and stays
in charge? Essentially, yes. He took Morgan's
money and used it to finance his own completely
independent empire. He bought the Papiani Steamship
Company almost immediately after. Which creates
the foundation for the Ellermann and Papiani
line. Right. He pivoted completely away from
the highly contestable North Atlantic where Morgan
was fighting his wars, and he doubled down on
the Mediterranean and the East. It's the pivot
of the century. And he just keeps consolidating
power. By 1903, he buys into the George Smith
& Sons City Line. And the Hall Line. Yeah. 50
% of both. Right. And this is crucial for the
identity of the company. The City Line is where
we got those iconic names. City of this, City
of that. City of London, City of Athens. And
the Hall Line gave them access to the African
trade routes. By bringing these under one umbrella,
he officially changed the name to Ellermann Lines.
He created a network that could move a crate
of tea from Bombay to Liverpool or a passenger
from London to Cape Town entirely within his
own system. Vertical integration. Exactly. And
he didn't stop. By 1904, he grabs the Glenn line,
which was MacGregor, Gowan Co. And then in 1908,
he buys the Bugnall steamship lines, which were
financially troubled. He's just buying distress
assets, turning them around and integrating them
into the machine. So by 1914, on the absolute
eve of the First World War, Ellermann Lines isn't
just a big company, it's a superpower. They controlled
four major subsidiaries, the Ellermann City Line,
Ellermann and Bucknell, Ellermann and Papiani,
and the Hall Line. It was a dominating position
to quote the history books directly. They held
total dominance in the Mediterranean and Near
East. But I want to pause on that pre -war era
for a second, because there's a specific incident
from 1908 that highlights the reality of operating
these ships. You're thinking of the wrecks. Yeah.
It wasn't just about balance sheets and corporate
takeovers. This was incredibly dangerous work.
The city of Naples. Exactly. The city of Naples,
which wrecked on the Zinesu Reef in 1908. We
tend to think of the Edwardian era as very civilized
and technologically mastered, but navigation
was still largely visual. If you hit fog or a
bad - storm you were in serious trouble. Losing
a capital ship like that was a massive financial
blow. But for Ellerman with his scale it was
just a line item. He absorbed the loss and kept
building. He didn't blink. Which brings us right
to 1914. The company is at its absolute zenith.
John Ellerman is practically printing money.
And then the Archduke is shot in Sarajevo. And
the lights go out all over Europe. World War
I completely transformed the merchant navy overnight.
We so often focus on the trenches and the western
front, but the war at sea was the actual lifeline
of Britain. If the ships stopped moving, the
island starved. Was that simple? The British
government knew this, so they immediately initiated
the requisition. Now, requisition sounds very
polite and administrative, but how did this actually
work in practice? Did the government just steal
the ships? It was essentially a compulsory lease.
The government took total operational control
of the vessel. They paid the company a set rate.
Which I'm guessing was not great. It was often
well below the market rate for freight. And the
government dictated exactly what the ship did.
So Ellermann's beautiful, profitable fleet was
just carved up? Torn apart. They had to operate
a skeletal service with whatever was left. The
requisitioned ships became troop transports.
They painted over those pristine buff funnels
with drab gray paint. Some carried munitions.
And some, the larger liners, actually became
armed merchant cruisers. Which, when you think
about it, putting guns on a passenger liner seems
like an incredibly desperate measure. It was
beyond desperate. They reinforced the decks as
best they could, bolted on some six inch naval
guns and sent them out to patrol the oceans.
But they were still just merchant ships. Exactly.
They were huge targets with very thin skin trying
to act like warships against actual warships.
And the losses started basically immediately.
The city of Winchester. That was the first casualty
of the war, wasn't it? The very first. August
1914. She was a brand new ship. Brand new. On
her maiden voyage homeward bound from India.
She had a hold full of tea and spices, just doing
exactly what she was built to do. And she ran
into the German cruiser Konigsberg. A commercial
ship against a dedicated, heavily armed warship.
He didn't stand a chance. None at all. Yeah.
She was captured, the crew was taken prisoner,
and the ship was scuttled, sent to the bottom.
And that must have sent an absolute shockwave
through the shitting industry, the realization
that the oceans were no longer safe for business.
It changed everything. But the company's response
to the war... And this is the part that I find
wildest about John Ellerman. He doesn't hunker
down. No. In 1916, right in the middle of the
war, while his ships are sinking left and right
to U -boats, he goes shopping. He buys the Wilson
Line of Hull. And this wasn't some small regional
purchase. He bought 67 vessels. 67 ships. While
German submarines are actively hunting British
shipping. It was a strategic masterstroke, honestly.
The Wilson Line specialized in short sea routes.
Scandinavia. The Baltic. So Ellermann was diversifying
his risk. Exactly. If the deep ocean ruts to
India and Africa were cut off by U -boats or
surface raiders, he still had the European trade
functioning. But the branding integration here
is a detail I absolutely love. Deliveries. Yes.
Shipping lines were incredibly tribal about their
colors. You knew a ship by its funnel long before
you could read the name on the hull. The Ellermann
standard was very distinctive. They had buff.
which is like a yellowish tan funnels with a
black top and a white dividing line. Over a gray
hull. Right. It looked very clean. Very efficient.
But the Wilson line had red funnels with black
tops and dark green hulls. Which is a complete
aesthetic clash. Total clash. You'd think Ellerman
would just order them all painted buff and gray
immediately. But he didn't. He didn't. He kept
the Wilson identity completely separate. He understood
that in hull, that red funnel actually meant
something. It meant local jobs, local pride.
Exactly. So the corporate entity became Ellerman's
Wilson line. But the ships stayed green and red.
It was very smart corporate branding for the
early 20th century. While he's buying fleets
and managing paint jobs, the actual war at sea
is getting weirder and much more dangerous. We
really have to talk about the theatricality of
the naval war here. You're thinking of the dummy
metal ships. Yes, the city of Oxford. Ah, the
city of Oxford. This is 1915. The British Admiralty
is getting desperate to confuse the Germans.
So they take this standard cargo ship. And they
basically turn her into a movie prop. They literally
used wood, canvas, and paint to build fake gun
turrets and fake superstructures all over her
deck. To make her look like a dreadnought. Right.
From a distance, or through a hazy periscope
site, she was supposed to look exactly like HMS
St. Vincent, which was a massive battleship.
The idea being to draw enemy fire away from the
real ships or to make the Germans think the Grand
Fleet was somewhere it totally wasn't. Yes. But
imagine being a merchant sailor assigned to that
ship. Oh, it's terrifying. You are sitting on
a slow cargo vessel made of thin steel plating,
but you're pretending to be the biggest threat
on the ocean. And your primary weapons are made
of plywood. If a real German battleship engages
you, you are finished instantly. It was incredibly
dangerous bluffing. but it shows the desperate
creativity of the era. And then you had the inverse
of that strategy too, the Q -ship. Right, where
instead of making a weak ship look strong, they
made a strong ship look weak. Like the Barrelong.
The Barrelong was an Ellermann ship, built in
1901, a standard, slightly rust -streak merchant
vessel. She would chug along slowly, looking
like an incredibly easy target. Because U -boats
didn't always use torpedoes back then. Torpedoes
were expensive. Very expensive. And they carried
very few of them. So a U -boat would surface
to sink a lone merchant ship with its deck gun.
And then the trap springs. The Barrelong would
drop these false bulkheads and canvas screens,
suddenly revealing hidden 12 -pounder naval guns.
And they would blow the U -boat out of the water
before the Germans could even scramble back inside
and dive. It was brutal. Completely merciless.
close quarters warfare. But unfortunately for
Ellerman Lines, not every story was a clever
ruse or a victorious trap. The losses overall
were just catastrophic. By the end of the war,
they had lost 103 ocean vessels. 103 ships. It's
a capacity loss of up to 750 ,000 tons. It's
a massive graveyard of metal and men. But amidst
all that destruction, there are these incredible
stories of survival. The city of Exeter is one
that we have to cover. That story is legendary
in the merchant navy. This is the mine strike
in the Indian Ocean. Right. She's 400 miles from
Bombay, middle of nowhere. She hits a naval mine.
And the explosion is massive. The number one
hold fills with water instantly. The ship starts
tipping forward, heavily down by the bow. The
master looks at the damage and orders abandon
ship. Which is the only rational call. Everyone
gets into the lifeboats. They pull away from
the ship, just sitting out there on the water,
waiting for the final plunge. But she doesn't
sink. She doesn't sink. She just sits there,
wallowing low in the water. So the master and
the chief engineer, just the two of them, decide
to row back to the ship. They row back to a sinking
ship. At grave risk to their own lives. They
climb up the side of this dying leviathan. They
go down deep into the dark flooding hull to inspect
the bulkheads. That is either incredible courage
or complete madness. Probably a bit of both.
But they look at the steel, they listen to the
groaning of the ship, and they decide the bulkheads
are gonna hold. So they called the lifeboats
back. They called everyone back. Imagine that
sales pitch to the passengers in the lifeboats.
Alright everyone, back on the sinking ship. We're
good, it's fine. But they re -embarked the passengers,
fired up the boilers, and they actually linked
that ship 400 miles to Bombay under her own steam.
It's a massive testament to the engineering of
the ships themselves. They were built remarkably
tough. They were. But luck eventually runs out
for a lot of them. We see the city of Athens,
mined off Cape Town in August 1917. And then
there's the naming conventions, which bring us
to some interesting historical footnotes. The
Lesbians. Right, we should clarify the name for
modern listeners. Yes, absolutely. Ellermann
used the city of names for the main line, but
the Papianni and other subsidiaries often used
Greek or Mediterranean names, ending in Eegian.
Like Andalusian. Flaminian. And lesbian, referring
directly to the Greek island of Lesbos. Right.
There are two ships with this name in the company's
history, and neither of them had a happy ending.
The first lesbian was built in 1915. right into
the teeth of the war. She was shelled and sunk
by U -35 in the Mediterranean. Just another statistic
in the Great Tonnage War. So November 1918 rolls
around. The war ends. Ellerman has lost 103 ships.
But John Ellerman himself is still standing.
Standing very tall. He used the insurance payouts
from the lost ships and the massive war profits
to start rebuilding immediately. He didn't wait
around. No. He bought up German liners that had
been seized as war reparations by the British
government. He ordered new ships built. And his
personal wealth just skyrocketed. By the time
he died in 1933, he was a baronet and his estate
was valued at 37 million pounds. Which, again,
doing the math on historical money is tough,
but that made him arguably the richest man in
Britain at the time. Without a doubt, an astronomical
sum. But while he passed away wealthy, the storm
clouds were gathering over Europe all over again.
We move into the late 1930s. The fleet has been
completely rebuilt to a hundred and five ships.
Nearly a million tons of capacity. One of the
biggest privately owned fleets in the world.
They had mixed cargo passenger ships, pure cargo,
short sea traders. And then it's 1939. World
War Two begins. And if World War One was a tragedy
for the merchant Navy, World War Two was an absolute
slaughter. The technology of killing ships had
advanced so much the U -boats weren't just lone
hunters anymore. They were operating in coordinated
wolf packs. They had better range, better torpedoes.
And air power was now a major, major threat.
Dive bombers, torpedo bombers. Ellermann lost
60 ships out of their 105. More than half the
entire fleet. 41 sunk by submarines, seven by
air attacks, three by mines, one by a surface
raider. It was relentless. There is one specific
loss that really defines this era for the company,
and it's heavily featured in the sources. The
city of Benares. Yes. Because this isn't just
about losing steel and tonnage. This is about
the morality of the war and how the public perceived
the war at sea. The city of Benares was a beautiful
ship. A luxury liner, relatively new. In September
1940, she was requisitioned for a very specific
mission. She was designated to carry evacuees
to Canada. This was part of the CORB program,
right? The Children's Overseas Reception Board.
Exactly. British parents were terrified of the
bliss, the bombing of London, and the cities.
So the government set up this program to send
children to safety overseas. So you have a luxury
ship loaded with 90 children, plus paying passengers
and the crew. She was sailing in a convoy. about
600 miles out into the Atlantic. And the weather
was horrific. Classic North Atlantic storm. Gale
force winds, freezing rain, huge swells. It was
night. And U -48 spotted her. Did the U -boat
commander know who was on board? No. There's
no way he could have known. To the U -boat, it
was just a large British merchant ship in a convoy,
a valid military target. They fired a torpedo.
and it hit. The result was an absolute nightmare.
The torpedo struck perfectly. The ship lost power
and started sinking fast. She went down in 30
minutes. And because of the storm? Because of
the storm and the severe list of the sinking
ship, launching the lifeboats was nearly impossible.
Many of the boats capsized as soon as they hit
the water. The numbers are just heartbreaking
to read. 258 people died in the freezing water.
Yeah. And 81 of them were children. 81 kids.
It was officially cited as the worst maritime
disaster in Ellerman Line's history. And the
historical impact of that event was massive.
When the news broke back in Britain, it effectively
ended the overseas evacuation program immediately.
The public realized that the Atlantic Ocean was
just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than
the Blitz. It changes the narrative of the war
at sea, from naval battles to literal atrocities
in the public eye. It does. It crystallized the
cruelty of the U -boat war. And yet... The sailors
had to just keep going back out there. Which
is astounding. You look at the fleet list and
it's just loss after loss. The city of Pretoria
in 1943. Torpedoed. All 149 people on board died.
The city of Shanghai in 1941 torpedoed by U -103.
The second city of Winchester also torpedoed
by U -103. The city of Cairo in 1942 sunk by
U -68. The carnage was just relentless. There
is a contrasting story, though, from the sources.
The city of Birmingham. Ah, right. This was a
mine strike. Yes, in 1940. She hit a mine and
sank. But because the evacuation was orderly
and the weather conditions were better, every
single person, all 80 souls on board, was saved.
It really highlights the capriciousness of fate
at sea during the war. One night you lose everyone,
the next day, in a similar situation, everyone
survives. Completely down to luck and weather.
There's another tragic vignette from this era
involving that unlucky name we mentioned earlier,
the second lesbian. Built in 1923. She actually
survived the interwar years fine, but during
World War II, she was operating in the Mediterranean.
And she didn't get sunk by a U -boat. No, she
was seized by Vichy French forces. The collaborationist
French government. Exactly. Captured by former
allies. And rather than let her be recaptured
by the advancing British forces later on, the
Vichy French just scuttled her in Beirut Harbor.
A sad, kind of ignoble end for a ship. Very much
so. So by 1945, the war is finally over. The
fleet is decimated yet again. down to 45 ships
from 105. But the company has done this before.
They know how to rebuild. They start the rebuild
immediately. But this time, the corporate strategy
shifts significantly. They launch what the records
call the new policy. This is a really fascinating
moment in maritime history. We're in the late
40s. Right. Aviation commercial flight is starting
to happen, but it's not totally dominant yet.
The jet age hasn't quite arrived. So Ellermann
decides to build what they called fasting cargo
liners. And the key defining feature of these
new ships is the passenger limit. Twelve passengers.
Twelve. Exactly. Why 12? I mean, why not 20?
Why not 50? It's the magic number in international
maritime law. Ah, a loophole. A huge loophole.
If you carry 13 passengers, you are legally classified
as a passenger ship. Which means? Which means
you need a dedicated ship's doctor, a hospital
on board, very specific watertight bulkhead spacing,
massive amounts of extra lifeboats, more stewards,
more cooks. It's incredibly expensive to run
a passenger ship. Very expensive. But if you
carry exactly 12 passengers or fewer, you are
legally just a cargo ship. So they dodge all
the passenger ship regulations. They do. But
for those 12 people who booked passage, it was
the absolute height of exclusivity. This wasn't
sleeping on a cot down in the cargo hold. The
sources describe it as considerable comfort.
These ships were beautiful. They had gorgeous
wood paneled staterooms, a dedicated lounge,
a formal dining room. You essentially dine with
the captain every night. It was known as the
country house at sea concept. That sounds incredibly
civilized. It really was. If you were a team
merchant heading out to Calcutta, or maybe a
diplomat traveling to Cape Town, this was how
you wanted to travel. It was much slower than
flying, obviously. Slower, yes. but infinitely
more comfortable. You spent three weeks drinking
gin and tonics on the deck while the ship hauled
thousands of tons of cargo below your feet. The
absolute golden age of travel before cheap flights
took over. The Indian summer of the British merchant
Navy really. They also vastly improved the crew
accommodation on these new ships, giving the
sailors much better living conditions. And they
bought up 12 government ships that they had managed
during the war to pad out the number. So by 1953.
They reach their post -war peak. The fleet is
almost completely rebuilt. 94 ships. 900 ,000
tons of capacity. They are back on top of the
world. But even in peacetime with these beautiful
new ships, things still go wrong. We have to
mention the City of Sydney incident in 1956.
An incredibly unfortunate accident. Because it
wasn't a mine or a torpedo this time? No. The
City of Sydney was navigating the very foggy
crowded waters of the North Sea. and she accidentally
rammed directly into a coal ship called the Corpschester.
Just a straight -up collision. The impact was
so severe that the Corpschester literally broke
in half and sank. It's a stark reminder that
these ships loaded with thousands of tons of
cargo have massive, massive momentum. Even with
radar, which was becoming very common by the
50s, physics still wins. You can't stop a 10
,000 ton ship on a dime. So we get through the
50s and into the 1960s. Ellermann Lines is rich,
they have these beautiful fast cargo liners,
and they have a global network of routes. But
there is an asteroid heading straight for the
industry. 1967. The looming threat? The box.
The shipping container. We really cannot overstate
how much containerization disrupted the entire
world. It changed everything. Before the container,
shipping was what we call break bulk. Meaning
everything was loose. Basically, yes. You had
cranes lifting individual nets of coffee sacks,
wooden barrels, wooden crates, pallets of machinery.
A complete mess. total mess. A ship would arrive
in port and it would have to spend two or maybe
three full weeks just unloading and reloading.
So the ship is earning absolutely zero money
for what 60 % of its lifespan? Exactly. It's
essentially just a very expensive floating warehouse
while it's in port. Plus you needed literal armies
of stevedores and dock workers to manually move
all that stuff. And theft was rampant. Oh, massive
theft. Shrinkage, they called it politely. Cases
of whiskey would just go missing. But the container
changed all the math. Completely. A standardized
steel box, a ship docks, massive specialized
cranes, pull the boxes straight off onto trucks
or trains, put new ones on, and the ship is gone.
In like 12 hours. Right. The efficiency gains
were astronomical. And this killed Ellermann.
It killed their entire business model. Ellerman's
beautiful, fast, 12 -passenger cargo liners were
suddenly totally obsolete. Because they weren't
designed to hold uniform steel boxes. They were
designed for brake bulk, they were too slow to
load and unload by the new standards, and the
capital required to switch containers was just
astronomical. You didn't just need to buy new
ships. You needed new port terminals. You needed
new trucks, new rail links, new logistics computer
systems to track the boxes. And simultaneously,
while this technological revolution is happening,
they have a massive geopolitical problem. Decolonization.
The world map isn't pink anymore. Exactly. Newly
independent nations, specifically India, wanted
to set up their own shipping companies. They
didn't want to rely on the old British imperial
lines anymore. So they established their own
state lines. Like the shipping corporation of
India. And these new governments implemented
protectionist policies. They said, look, if you
want to trade with India, 50 percent of the cargo
has to go on our Indian ships. So Ellermann instantly
loses its guaranteed monopoly on its most profitable
routes. And his technology is out of date. It
was a perfect storm. They tried to adapt, though.
The records show in 1966, they joined the ACT
group. The Associated Container Transportation
Consortium. They tried to pool their resources
with other struggling British lines to build
container ships together, because no one could
afford it alone. They even tried diversifying
completely outside of shipping. They expanded
into hotels. They bought into the brewing industry.
They even bought a printing company, which is
the classic corporate panic move. We don't know
how to make money on ships anymore. Let's try
to sell beer. It rarely ever works out. By 1973,
they merged all their remaining shipping companies
into one single division just to cut costs. The
profitability just plummeted. And by the 1980s,
the writing was on the wall. The company began
what the outline hilariously calls the corporate
potato pass. It gets sold from hand to hand as
everyone tries to extract whatever value is left.
So in 1983, the Barclay brothers, the famous
billionaire twins, buy it. And they sell it.
In 1985, the management actually buys it out.
A management buyout. But that doesn't last. No.
In 1987, it gets sold to Trafalgar House. And
they merge it with Cunard to form Cunard Ellermann.
Now, that actually sounds like a strong brand,
combining two legendary names. It was a strong
brand for a brief moment. But the bleeding didn't
stop. In 1991, it gets passed along again, this
time to the Andrew Weir shipping group. And finally,
in 2003, it is sold to Hamburg Sud, the massive
German shipping conglomerate. And that was essentially
the end of the line. In 2004, Hamburg Sud announced
they were officially dropping the Ellermann name.
The remaining city of ships were repainted renamed
or sold off for scrap. The staff were let go
were just absorbed into the German machine. And
after 112 years of history, the name Ellermann
Lines completely ceased to exist. It feels like
such a quiet, bureaucratic death for such a loud,
dramatic history. It really does. I mean, you
have streets named after John Ellermann in Amsterdam
and Antwerp. But the company itself just evaporated
into the ledger of a foreign conglomerate. That
is usually how these corporate stories end. Globalization
just kind of eats its parents. It does. It consolidates
into these anonymous mega -corporations. That
is n - where this story ends. No, it's not. Because
in 2021, something incredibly weird happened.
The supply chain crisis. Right. Everyone remembers
the pandemic. Ports were completely clogged.
Ships were parked off the coast of California
for weeks. And shipping rates went absolutely
insane. They went from like $2 ,000 a container
to $20 ,000 a container. Everyone was desperate
for cargo space. And in the middle of all that
chaos, a ghost appeared. A new company. Backed
by Uni Ocean Lines, launched a brand new cargo
service between the UK, China, Europe, and the
USA. And they needed a name. They called it Ellermann
City Liners. They literally brought the name
back from the dead. They did. After a 17 -year
hiatus. The name returned to commercial use.
Why? I mean, why revive a dead British brand?
Because they recognized that in the shipping
industry, trust and legacy mean everything. And
Ellermann still meant something in the collective
memory of the ports and the forwarders. It meant
British reliability. It meant a century of history.
Exactly. So today. Right now, as we're speaking,
there are giant container ships moving across
the ocean with Ellermans stamped on the side.
Yes. They are chartering ships. They're running
active routes. The city of Prefix is even back
on some vessels. That is wild. It's a modern,
asset -light version of the old company, obviously.
They aren't building passenger steamships. But
the lineage, the brand? is back. It really is
a remarkable survival story when you zoom out.
From that 800 ,000 pounds Victorian startup to
the dummy battleships of World War I, to the
luxury cargo liners of the 50s, to being chewed
up by the corporate mergers, and finally this
modern container revival. I think the whole story
serves as a really powerful reminder that the
global trade network isn't just some anonymous
automated machine. No. It's a deeply human endeavor.
It was built on massive financial risks, on the
bravery of sailors, on terrible heartbreaking
tragedies like the Benoris. And on incredible
feats of seamanship like the Exeter. So a final
thought for you to chew on. In this modern hyper
globalized world of completely identical anonymous
shipping containers, the dramatic history of
lines like Ellermann, Ramon is of the sheer human
and mechanical post of building the world we
live in today. Next time you see a container
truck out on the highway, take a close look at
the logo on the side. You might just be looking
at a piece of history that absolutely refused
to die. Thanks for joining us on the deep dive.
We'll see you next time.