Orient Steam Navigation Co Ltd

The Orient Steam Navigation Company was established in 1878 and jointly managed by the London shipowning firms of Anderson, Anderson and Company and F. Green and Company until 1919, when the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company acquired a controlling interest in its shareholding capital; at approximately the same time the dual management of the undertaking by the Anderson and Green companies came to an end and the two businesses were merged into a private limited company formed for the purpose, Anderson, Green and Company Limited. The Orient company was a small enterprise operating a handful of very large ships in virtually one trade, the mail and passenger service to Australia and New Zealand. In due course it provided a co-ordinated service in this region with ships of the P&O fleet; in later years, similarly in collaboration with P&O, a passenger service between North American ports and Australia and New Zealand was instituted, and in attempts to promote passenger traffic in the Pacific, a series of voyages between North America, the Far East and Australia were inaugurated. The company's ships were also extensively employed in ocean cruising. Anderson, Green and Company Limited, the managers, were brought under the P and O umbrella in 1949, but the P and O and Orient companies maintained separate identities and independent shore organizations until 1960 when the services were run together and the balance of the ordinary share-holdings of the Orient company was bought up by P and O. A new company, P and O/Orient Lines Passenger Services Limited, better known under its trading name, Orient and Pacific Lines, was set up to run the services of the two companies, an arrangement which ceased to exist in 1966. In the following years the former Orient company vessels gradually came into P and O ownership and their livery was likewise altered. See 'Steam to Australia', Syren and Shipping, July 1938; Stephen Rabson, 'Orient -- a mark of quality', Wavelength, June 1977.