On 18th November 1937
the company became officially known as Port Line Limited.
Walter Tyser retired as chairman in 1939 and was replaced
by Herbert Corry, an act which indicated continual family
involvement and endorsed Cunard's policy of allowing Port
Line to manage it's own affairs. When the Second World War
was declared on 3rd September 1939 precautions were taken
when most of the London office was moved to 'Oaklawn', a large
house near Leatherhead and emergency offices duplicated in
Berkeley Square. However, the house in Leatherhead was bomb
damaged on two occasions whereas the Leadenhall St. office
was merely damaged by bomb blast and incendiaries.
The fleet comprised 28 ships
when war was declared with two more almost ready for delivery
but 12 of them plus a war built addition were to be lost before
the end of hostilities. The first victim was the Port Denison
from an air attack in 1940 quickly followed by the Port Gisborne,
torpedoed in the Atlantic. In the November of 1940 the Port
Brisbane, the Port Hobart and the Port Wellington were all
sunk by surface raiders while the Port Napier, which had been
converted into a minelayer, was destroyed when it blew up
without, fortunately, any loss of life.
In March 1941 the Port Townsville
was bombed in the Bristol Channel and, in the following month,
the Port Hardy was torpedoed in the Atlantic whilst part of
an inbound convoy. In July of that year the Port Chalmers
safely completed a Malta convoy. In 1942 three more ships
were lost to submarine attack. The Port Montreal and the Port
Nicholson were torpedoed in the June and the Port Hunter was
similarly dispatched to the bottom in the July. Once again
the Port Chalmers triumphed when she came through the immortal
Operation Pedestal to Malta unscathed.
The last two Port Line war casualties were in 1943 when the
Port Auckland was lost in the March followed by, the almost
new replacement, the Port Victor in the April, both torpedoed
by U-boats. There was, however, one further catastrophe when,
on 14th April 1944, one of ships managed by Port Line, the
Fort Stikine, was blown to smithereens in a double explosion
at Bombay. Eighteen merchant ships were lost or damaged and
three warships were also damaged. Over 1000 people lost their
lives.
As soon as the war ended in 1945 a fleet replacement programme
was immediately instigated. Although the surviving fleet was
de-commissioned in 1946 it was still under the control of
the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Food. In March
1947 the managing director of 15 years, William Donald, succeeded
Herbert Corry as chairman and, as a point of interest, M.A.N
Z. purchased the only ship it ever owned, the Ottawa Valley,
during that year but it never sailed in the Port Line livery.
In 1957 Port Line, Blue Star
Line, Shaw, Saville & Albion and the New Zealand Shipping
Company, as equal partners, formed the Crusader Shipping Co.
Ltd. for the purpose of trading between New Zealand, the Far
East and the Pacific coast of North America. The company began
operations in the following year with three commissioned ships,
the Crusader, the Saracen and the Knight Templar, all managed
by Shaw Saville & Albion, together with one ship allocated
by each partner, Port Line's being Port Montreal.
Ronald H. Senior became chairman
of Port Line on 1st January 1961. Over the coming years he
was to guide the company into the era of containerisation
which was gaining in popularity in the shipping world.
On 12th January 1966 a consortium
consisting of Port Line, Blue Star Line, William Thompson's
Ben Line, Charente Steamship Co. (Thos. & Jas. Harrison)
and Ellerman's formed the Associated Container Transportation
Ltd. (A.C.T.). At the same time Associated Container Transportation
(Australia) Ltd was incorporated as a subsidiary company in
Sydney. As a consequence, the future M.A.N.Z. was that it
would be run down and replaced by a container service.
In May 1967 the Port New Plymouth carried the first container
as an experiment for ACT. The service proved to be revolutionary
inasmuch that the container was offloaded, delivered straight
to the consignee and unloaded in less that thirty minutes.
The number of containers gradually increased and the fleet
was progressively modified to facilitate their carriage. By
the August container loads were being shipped on the inbound
voyages.
When the Suez Canal was blocked in June 1967 as a consequence
of the Israeli-Arab 'Six Days War' the new Port Invercargill
was one of the vessels that became trapped. She remained in
the canal for eight years and never re-entered service for
Port Line.
By the end of the '60's the
shipping industry was facing tremendous change. Traditional
cargo ships were beginning to be replaced by container carriers
and passenger ships were facing increasing competition resulting
from the development of mass air travel. Sir Basil Smallpiece,
former managing director of the British Overseas Airways Corporation,
had joined the Port Line board in 1965 but on 1st January
1968 became the chairman of all of Cunard's subsidiary companies
with the role of co-ordinating a programme of retrenchment.
The first move was to cut overheads and on 10th March 1968
Blue Star Port Line (Management) Ltd , referred to as Blueport,
was incorporated with Ronald Vestey of Blue Star as the first
chairman. The company initially had control of fifty six ships
but the cost cutting policy and the introduction of more ACT
container ships meant that the fleet was soon to shrink in
size.
Cost cutting consolidation
in New Zealand saw the incorporation of Cargo Equipment Service
Co. Ltd. (CESCO), formed to own and operate all equipment
needed by Blueport, Shaw, Saville & Albion and the New
Zealand Shipping Co. In Australia the Sydney offices of Port
Line and Blue Star were amalgamated with those of Ellerman
& Bucknall to form Joint Cargo Services Ltd.
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