Quote from Board of Trade Aquaintances
Between 1914 and 1946 P&O acquired a number of other shipping companies, beginning with the British India Steam Navigation Company whose Chairman Lord Inchcape also became Chairman of P&O following the retirement of Sir Thomas Sutherland. The New Zealand Shipping Company, Federal Steam Navigation Company, Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand, Hain Steamship Company and James Nourse were taken over during the First World War. Orient Line, Mercantile Steamship, General Steam and Strick Line were acquired soon afterwards, Moss Hutchison Line and New Medway Steam Packet Company in the 1930s, and Eastern & Australian Steamship Company in 1946.
Under Lord Inchcape’s Chairmanship from 1915 to 1932, the combined fleet grew to a peak in the mid 1920’s of nearly five hundred ships of many different kinds, ranging from P&O’s traditional black-hulled passenger and mail liners to coasters, colliers, Thames pleasure steamers, state-of-the-art refrigerated cargo liners on the New Zealand/UK service, and passenger/cargo ships of all shapes and sizes trading along the coasts of India, the Gulf, and East Africa.
P&O itself continued to concentrate on large, fast passenger and mail steamers. Its best ships served as troopships and armed merchant cruisers in both World Wars. Several were sunk, but most losses suffered by the P&O Group - 85 ships in the First World War, 179 in the Second - were as part of the massive contribution by its cargo ships to the struggle to keep Britain supplied with munitions, raw materials and foodstuffs.
TomS