SAMUEL CUNARD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1938, Page 2

SAMUEL CUNARD

FOUNDER OF GREAT SHIPPING LINE. “NOTHING BUT THE BEST.” Beside the great hull of the Mauretania, just launched, one seems to visualise the shadowy figure of that great little man who founded the company known as the Cunard White Star Line (writes “Taffrail,” in the “Observer”). A hundred years ago Samuel Cunard, the son of a working carpenter, but by that time a successful man of business in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was described as a small, grey-haired man of quiet manners and not overflowing speech. Brisk, brimful of energy, and always on the alert to seize an opportunity, he possessed immense determination and powers of endurance. His business qualifications were remarkable. He had a flair for impressing people with his ideas; and his promptitude in grasping opportunity and transforming it into action was tempered with unfailing sagacity and foresight. HIS FIRST CHANCE. It was in 1838 that the Admiralty invited tenders for a mail contract by steam across the Atlantic —early in 1839, at the age of 52, that Cunard determined to secure that contract, came hot-foot to England from Halifax without sufficient capital to purchase the ships he needed. In London he got into touch with his friend James Melvill, the secretary of the East India Company, and, through him, secured an introduction to that well-known marine engine builder, Robert Napier. Meeting Napier, Cunard ordered his ships in “a frank, offhand manner,” and, on the strength of those ships, persuaded the Government and the Admiralty that his scheme for a transatlantic mail service was the best. There were influential competitors. Cunard’s task in breaking down prejudice and opposition cannot have been easy. He secured his mail contract; but wanted more capital properly to fulfil his obligations. People in London, Liverpool, and Glasgow were not enthusiastic. Through Melvill, once more, he went to Napier, explained his diffliculty, and was put in touch with George Burns and David Maclver. Hard-headed men of business, they also had to be p'ersuaded that his scheme was sound. The capital was eventually forthcoming, Cunard himself being the largest shareholder. From the very establishment of the Cunard Line in 1840 its founder guaranteed a regular all-the»year* round transatlantic service. As he himself once observed, he insisted upon “nothing but the best ships, the best officers, and the best men.” Thoroughness was one of his watchwords. Moreover, it was Cunard who first realised that three or four ships were necessary to run a regular steam service across the stormy Atlantic. Regularity was everything. WOODEN PADDLE STEAMERS. The first Cunarders, the Britannia, Acadia, Caledonia, and Columbia of 1840, were wooden paddle steamers of 1154 tons, 207 feet long on the keel., They steamed eight and a-half knots. With a little alteration one of them could be accommodated on each side of the Queen Mary’s boat deck. Shorn of her bowsprit, masts, funnel, and paddle-boxes the Britannia, up-ended, could almost be inserted into one of the funnels of the new Queen Elizabeth, which was launched recently. The development in shipbuilding during the last century has been almost terrifying. Cunard’s monument is the fleet of fine ships which now fly the wellknown house flags of the Cunard Wnite Star Line. Their familiar red, black-topped funnels serve to remind us that the first Cunarders were engined by Robert Napier. Since ordinary oil paint would have blistered with the heat his previous coastal steamers had had their smoke stacks paintea with a mixture of red ochre and buttermilk. The same mixture was adopted for the Britannia and her three sisters, and tne same colouring holds good today.