Coast Lines Ltd

Coast Lines Ltd of Liverpool was formed by the merging of three lines in 1913 and until 1917 was known by their joint names, Powell, Bacon and Hough. The name of Coast Lines Limited was adopted in 1917, when the company was absorbed into the Royal Mail Group (q.v.). After the dissolution of the group in 1931, the company became independent under the chairmanship of Sir Alfred Read (1871-1955), who had previously been a director. From 1917 to 1951 Coast Lines acquired a controlling interest in a large number of coastal shipping companies, eventually numbering about twenty, of which the most important were: the British and Irish Steam Packet Company Ltd, acquired in 1917; City of Cork Steam Packet Company Limited, acquired in 1918; the Belfast Steamship Company Limited, acquired 1919; Burns and Laird Lines, acquired 1920 and 1919; and Tyne Tees Steam Shipping Company Limited, acquired in 1943. Some idea of the extent of the Company's activities, spanning the whole of the British and Irish seaboard and extending to the Scottish and Channel Islands, can be gained from the fact that during 1951, with a fleet of 109 ships, the total of cargo carried was in excess of four million tons, and of livestock more than half a million head, while over a million passengers were also carried. This period saw the high water mark of the British, as distinct from the cross-channel, internal freight and passenger trades. The British and Irish Steam Packet Company Limited was sold to the Irish Government in 1965, together with its subsidiary, the City of Cork Steam Packet Company. The last stage of the streamlining of the Coast Lines Limited and its associates took place when the company was acquired, in 1971, by the P and 0 Group. See E.R. Reader, 'The world's largest coaster fleet', Sea Breezes, February 1949.