Vintage The Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) Enamel Shield Shaped Car Badge

Dated around 1930 - 60's

Enamel on brass

9cm x 10.5cm approx

Good used condition for age, with some superficial wear, marks and tarnishing. Some slight deterioration to the enamel.

The Peninsular Steam Navigation Company was founded in 1835 and gained the mail contract in 1837. By 1840 the company carried mail from Falmouth and passengers from London to the Peninsular ports as far as Gibraltar. Owned by the London shipbroking partnership of Brodie McGhie Willcox (1786-1862) and Arthur Anderson (1792-1868), the company in the same year successfully tendered for the mail contract from England to Egypt on the understanding that within two years the new undertaking would establish a line of steamers capable of taking the mail from Egypt to India. In the same year the company received the Royal Charter of incorporation constituting it as the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. By 1842 the first steamer had sailed; two years later a regular mail service had been established from England to Alexandria and from Suez to Ceylon, Madras and Calcutta, with an extension, by 1845, to Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. By 1852 steam communication with Australia was established and in 1854 the Bombay mail service was taken over from the East India Company. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 initially posed difficulties since the company had sunk much capital into dealing efficiently with the overland route between Alexandria and Suez. The fortunes of P&O during this difficult time were guided by Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Sutherland (1834-1922), who became Managing Director in 1872. By economising and modernising, which included moving the home port terminal from Southampton to London, he brought the company through to a position of strength. By 1913, with a paid-up capital of £5 1/2 million and over sixty ships in service, several more under construction and numerous harbour craft and tugs to service the fleet, the company owned half a million tons of shipping. In addition to the main mail route, and the recently inaugurated P&O Branch Line via the Cape to Australia, the company ran feeder services backwards and forwards across both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the whole complex exercise was serviced by over two hundred agencies stationed at ports throughout the world. The early twentieth century was marked by a series of takeovers and mergers. The Blue Anchor Line was absorbed in 1910 and in 1914 there was a merger with the British India Steam Navigation Company (q.v.), a concern which was equal in size to P&O. The two companies continued to be run as separate concerns but with identical interests and under one control. James MacKay (later Lord Inchcape, 1852-1932) continued as chairman of British India, but, after his election to the board of P&O, he succeeded to the chairmanship of the combination on Sutherland's retirement. This was followed in 1916 by an amalgamation with the New Zealand Shipping Company (q.v.) and its associate, the Federal Steam Navigational Company; in 1917 by the acquisition of a representative holding in the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand; and shortly afterwards by the purchase of the Hain Line, Mercantile Steamship Company and James Nourse Limited (q.v.). In 1918 the group was strengthened by a substantial holding in the Orient Steam Navigation Co. (q.v.), and in 1920 the oldest established seagoing steamship undertaking, the General Steam Navigation Company (q.v.), was taken over. These alliances thus produced a single system which touched every major port of the Empire, and provided access to almost all parts of the world. Among several secondary works are Boyd Cable, 'A hundred year history of P&O' (London, 1937) and David Divine, 'These splendid ships' (London, 1960).