His father and a Liverpool shipowner,
Thomas Ainsworth, encouraged Alfred to become a shipping manager.
The Dumbarton Youth was purchased and Alfred acted as her agent
and superintendent engineer. The Dumbarton Youth was the very
first vessel to display the famous blue funnel and was the forerunner
of all Blue Funnel ships. However, it would appear that that
the choice of colour was not pre-planned but came about through
circumstance. The tradition in those days was to mark the death
of a shipowner by painting a blue band round the hull as a mark
of respect. When George Holt and Thomas Ainsworth bought the
Dumbarton Youth she had been decorated in this manner and there
were some drums of left on board which were used to paint the
funnel.
Alfred and his brother Philip, who had now become a partner,
embarked upon the highly competitive and overcrowded West Indies
routes, and suffered a serious loss in their first venture.
But they were not deterred and went ahead and formed the Ocean
Steamship Company with Alfred as the aggressive and ambitious
leader supported by his self-effacing but shrewd brother.
The Agamemnon sailed from Liverpool on 19th
April, 1866 and became not only the first of Ocean Steamship's
Blue Funnel vessels to sail for China but also the first steamship
to forge a link between Britain and the Far East. Powered with
a single screw the three sister ships, Agememnon, Ajax and Achilles
had a service speed of 10 knots. They were 310ft in length with
a beam of 39ft and had a registered tonnage of 2280 tons. The
fore and main masts were barque-rigged to make full use of the
trade winds and monsoon winds around the Cape of Good Hope.
Their performance was impressive and a homeward run of 12,530
miles was completed in 57 days and 18 hours and the daily coal
consumption never exceeded 20 tons per day. The holds could
carry up to 2800 tons of cargo which usually included tea loaded
at Foochow.
The Ocean Steamship Company was unique in
another respect; it was, in the early days, the only company
in which the owners were directly involved in the design and
construction of the company's vessels. Alfred Holt was a marine
engineer long before the company was founded and had earned
professional recognition as a result of his work on the compound
engine. Francis E Hyde in his book 'Blue Funnel', a history
of Holt's earlier years, quotes Alfred Holt as follows, the
main problems in 1852 centred around the screw propeller, the
building of a ship in iron, and the compound engine. Alfred
Holt was among the first to combine the three features successfully
thus paving the way for the development of economical large
long-distance ocean-going liners.
In the early years the ships were built at
either Scott's at Greenock or Leslie's on Tyneside but Alfred
Holt was most definitely the designer. Shortly before his death
he reputedly said to his contemporaries that when he died he
would be able to say to God: 'These are my ships.' His ships
they certainly were. Although he had employed Henry Bell Wortley,
a naval architect, in 1893 who, in his own right, became a distinguished
designer of Blue Funnel ships, Alfred Holt was the master planner
right up to his semi-retirement in 1898. Frequently criticised
for conservatism in ship design he established the 'Holt Standard'
with his vessels setting a world wide criterion as 'Holt Class'.
The legacy of Alfred Holt lived on and even when the Holt name
disappeared in 1966 the Blue Funnel ships continued to be designed
and built in the new manager's, Ocean Transport & Trading
Co., Odyssey Works at Birkenhead.
Everything, however, was not plain sailing. The sailing clippers
remained supreme and highly competitive, Holt's freight rates
were on the high side for the Liverpool merchants and homeward
bound cargoes were hard to come by. The nightmare of ships sailing
with ballast was a reality and memories of the failure of the
West Indies venture were revived. Fortunately for Alfred Holt
a moment in history was about to happen that would change the
face of maritime commerce and improve Blue Funnel's fortunes.
In November 1869 the Suez Canal opened and
the Far East run was, at a stroke, reduced by some 3000 miles
equating to a saving in time of 10 to 12 days. The days of the
sailing ship were numbered but, at the same time, the new route
attracted newcomers. The Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation
Company, subsidised by the mail contract, were now able to operate
through voyages with the French Messageries Maritimes also providing
stiff competition.
Blue Funnel had successfully 'seen off' the
tea clipper forcing them to move on to other trades such as
the wool run from Australia. They had also competed successfully
against some inferior steamers for the tea trade and by 1869
revenue and profitability were improving. But the new competition
threatened Holt's expansion plans notably the building of 12
new ships and the establishment of agencies in the Far East
at existing and new ports of call.
Another contentious matter, as far as Alfred
Holt was concerned, was the question of subsidies. In principle
he was against them and in 1875 wrote, ..Subsidised steamers
are the curse of steamship owning, cheapening freight and passenger
money wherever they go. Although he had unsuccessfully bid for
a part of P&O's exclusive franchise he still considered
that...so large a subsidy in the hands of one private company
was injurious to private shipowners and prejudicial to the trade
of the country.
The Suez Canal became more and more congested as additional
shipping companies joined the trade routes to the Far East.
Included among the newcomers were the Glen Line (acquired by
the company in 1935), the Castle and Shire Lines as well as
foreign competition from the Germans, the Dutch and the Americans.
Alfred Holt's position was further undermined when tea from
India and Ceylon became popular and so diminished the Chinese
tea trade. To avoid being forced out of business altogether
the company reluctantly joined one of the first shipping 'conferences'.
The objectives of the shipping conferences
were to regulate competition and to stabilise freight rates
and passenger fares. Conferences were organised according to
trading areas and the first China Conference, set up in 1879,
produced a working arrangement between Holt's, Glen Line, Castle
Line, P&O and the French company Messageries Maritimes.
However, it was an uneasy alliance and each company manipulated
the rules for their own benefit. Alfred Holt was no exception
and promptly undercut P&O's freight rates on the Hong Kong
- Bombay route.
The Conference, uneasy or not, managed
to maintain a virtual closed shop until it's monopoly was challenged
by a group with British interests who set up the China Shippers'
Mutual Steam Navigation Company. The prospectus of the China
Mutual, as it was called, stated in unambiguous words...a secondary
but highly important end which the establishment of the company
will secure is the liberation of shippers from the imposition
of conditions adverse to their interests. The gauntlet had been
thrown down and this new company was about to test the power
of the Conference.
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