Around the Coast and across the Seas: The Story of James Fisher and Sons

Journal of Transport History, The, Mar 2001 by Armstrong, John

Nigel Watson, Around the Coast and across the Seas: the story of James Fisher and Sons, St Matthew's Press, Leyburn, (2000), 178 pp., L25.00.

This book is a commissioned company history of a Barrow-based firm, James Fisher and Sons, which began in ship owning and management in the late 1840s and by the early 1870s was supervising about eighty vessels. Until the 1880s it stuck with sailing ships, but then moved slowly into steamers. Watson explains the persistence with sail as caused by unfortunate experiences with a pair of steamers bought in 1858 of which the engines were so unreliable that they were removed within four years and the ships reverted to sail. Fisher's began with schooners in the coastal trade, cashing in on the boom in local iron ore production which was initially mostly sent by sea to South Wales and other smelters. Later as agents for Schneider's they shipped pig iron, rails and other ferrous products, bringing back those staples of the coastal trade, coal, grain and timber.

Essentially this was a family business run by three generations of the Fisher family. The third generation were less fecund, one son dying as a youth, the other marrying late and having no children. It was intended that the mantle should fall on to a nephew who was brought into the firm just before the Second World War but he died in his early forties in 1959. From the 1960s the firm was increasingly becoming professionally managed, that is, run by men who were not shareholders and had no family connection. Some members of the family displayed entrepreneurial ability, spotting opportunities, diversifying into insurance, ship repairing and owning their own Irish iron ore mountain, but there was also at least one drunk and spendthrift. Like many successful businessmen the Fishers involved themselves in their locality, several being councillors and mayors.

The post-Second World War period saw innovations. The firm became a public company in 1952; it began operating containers across the Irish Sea and to a lesser extent the English Channel in the 1950s. In the 1960s it began using unitised loads based on steel pallets capable of carrying up to fifteen tons. Most important of all, Fisher's came to be renowned for its ability to carry abnormal and heavy loads at sea. The firm carved out a special niche market for itself moving locomotives and heavy machinery. This was a very profitable niche for Fisher's. Coastal tankers also became a profitable part of the group, as did port operations as traditional bulk cargoes became less available and less lucrative.

There is much detail on voyages, cargoes carried and the ships themselves. Sadly there is much less on the business side, except in the broadest terms. We know little of profitability or returns. Another omission, from this reviewer's point of view, was that there is no attempt to compare this firm's experience with that of other family firms engaged in the coastal and short sea trades. Although only a few have had works written about them, it would have been interesting to see how Fisher compared with the Slades, Coppocks, Ashburners or Everards. Were there any common patterns or trends?

This book is lavishly illustrated, containing well over 100 illustrations, just under half of them in colour. It is well written, with a clear narrative, and endeavours to place Fisher's activities in the more general economic trends. It contains a twenty-page fleet list, which includes the name of the builder, type of vessel, the year acquired and the year the ship was lost or disposed of. So it caters for the shipping buffs. Strangely it only occasionally records the fate of the vessel and, if sold, never says to whom. From the academic point of view the book is rather less satisfactory. It has no referencing system, so it is difficult to know from where specific material is drawn, it has many quotations (that is, passages in inverted commas) but never attributes them, the bibliography is commendable if a little brief (there are no references to the other coaster-owning families mentioned above) and it mangles the name of that doyen of transport history, Philip Bagwell. Oddly there is no family tree, which is a pity, as it would have made understanding the family relationships a little easier, and some of the conversions to present-day prices look rather dubious, for example average weekly wages have gone up much more than fifty times between 1862 and now. There is a very full listing of the archival sources, presumably held by the firm, and which may now be available for research.

Overall this is a good attempt at satisfying three markets: the firm itself, the enthusiasts and the academics. None will be wholly satisfied but all can gain something from it.

John Armstrong, Thames Valley University