P&O

Each day of the Olympics, Transport for London have been sending out notices regarding possible problems on the transport network. Today when I ploughed my way through my emails at work, I read the latest one which included a few statistics.

For the first 12 days of the Olympics, the Tube has seen the busiest days ever in it’s history. While this is obviously not unexpected, the numbers are quite something. For instance, from 28 July until this morning there have been 46.95 million journeys on the network. To put this figure into some sort of perspective, for the same period last year, the number was 30% less at 35.9 million. That’s an extra 11.05 million journeys.. And I’ve not heard of any major problems so maybe the Tube deserves a gold medal. Mind you, there’s still a few days to go.

Meanwhile, work continues on the Shipping Gallery. This week I did an awful lot of work on P&O, who celebrate their 175th birthday this year. I just thought they sailed people around but I know better now!

Way back in 1815, a young enterprising lad called Brodie Willcox decided to set himself up as a ship broker in Lime Street, London. To help him in this, he hired Arthur Anderson as a clerk. By 1822 they were partners, connected by their business acumen and socialist leanings. Not a lot is known about Brodie but Arthur started life as a young boy in the Shetlands cleaning fish on the beach, before voluntarily joining the navy. I can only assume it was because he was sick of cleaning fish. He left the navy and, having been dumped in London, joined Willcox.

Having helped out a bunch of Spanish separatists with guns and ships, they joined forces with a Dublin ship owner, Captain Richard Bourne to start the Peninsular Steam Navigation company in 1837. After they secured the mail run between the UK and Spain, they were set. It was in 1840 that the crown gave them the contract to also deliver to Egypt, that they added the ‘Oriental’ to their name and they very quickly became known as P&O.

While their shipping business was obviously very successful, their political lives also developed strongly, both of them standing as Liberals for Southampton (Willcox) and Lewick (Anderson). Obviously they both became extremely wealthy as well.

I have no idea what Willcox did with his dosh, but Anderson was a great philanthropist, giving money back to those he felt deserved it. He endowed many institutions with funds not least of all, the Arthur Anderson School in Lewick.

Meanwhile, P&O diversified into cruises, shipping of goods, helping out during wars as well as delivering the mail. They even purchased a firm of builders for a bit in the 1960s. Of course, it all came to an end in 2006 when the last bit of P&O was bought by a Dubai company, although the name is still used, maintaining the good will it invokes.

Of course, the main thing I remember P&O for is how they transported the Cook family to Australia back in 1960 aboard the Iberia.

In media news, Mirinda had her first newspaper interview today and said it went very well. She has four more on Monday for publication (and telecast) on Tuesday. It’s all getting very exciting.