Po history

However, its origins date back even further -- to 1822, when the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company was founded by two men, a London shipbroker by the name of Brodhie McGhie Wilcox (after whom the Brodie's pub on many of the modern P&O ships is named); and a Scottish sailor, Arthur Anderson.

Peninsular Steam Navigation Company Prospectus, August 1834

In 1835 he started a newspaper in his native Shetland.

1837: Full steam ahead! On 22 August 1837, our founders began revolutionising commerce and communication by sea after signing a government contract to ferry post between the Iberian Peninsula and London post by steamer.

The money order business was taken over by the Post Office in 1838, and made a loss.

In 1840 the line merged with the Transatlantic Steam Navigation Company, after which the company became known as the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company -- or P&O for short.

However, it was not until 1844 the line carried its first passengers -- to Athens, Gibraltar and Malta, sailing, as it still does, from Southampton, U.K.

He started to enforce strict controls over costs and in 1854 he at last obtained the position he wanted: Secretary to the Post Office as the sole permanent head of its administration. It was only in 1846, with the return of the Whigs to power, that he obtained a position in the Post Office, as Secretary to the Postmaster General.

1852: Spurred on by the Australian Gold Rush, P&O sent its first steamer into the New World.

Florence Nightingale travelled on board Vectis from Marseilles to Constantinople in October 1853 at the start of the Crimean War.

He started to enforce strict controls over costs and in 1854 he at last obtained the position he wanted: Secretary to the Post Office as the sole permanent head of its administration.

The Anglo-Persian war of 1856 created a further demand for troop transports, swiftly followed by the Indian Mutiny a year later.

By the end of the decade 38 of the 55-strong fleet were screw steamers including Malabar, which endeared P&O to a thirsty nation of tea lovers, as the first Company to carry tea by steamer from China in 1859.

In 1861 Mooltan was the first ship to have ice-making facilities - a luxury not even dreamed of 20 years before.

Until his retirement in 1864 he ran the Post Office in a high-handed and autocratic manner, with scant regard for the fact that he was in theory answerable to the Postmaster General who was the political head of the department.

The Post Office was given a monopoly of the telegraph service, and in 1879 the courts ruled that this also covered telephones.

In 1881 the solution was the introduction of postal orders, a cheaper means of sending small sums.

In 1882 a new chairman, Thomas Sutherland, presided over a huge building programme, begun 10 years earlier, which focused on speed, efficiency and greater capacity for freight and passengers.

Hill had been willing to accept the introduction of a parcel post operated in conjunction with the railway companies, and this was finally introduced in 1883.

The largest and grandest of the new steamers, the 6,000 ton, four-strong, Jubilee Class - Victoria, Britannia, Arcadia and Oceana - aptly marked the occasion of the Company’s, and Queen Victoria’s, Golden Jubilee in 1887.

The Orient Line was one of the pioneers when it entered the trade in 1889 with two of their Australian Mail steamers, the CHIMBORAZO and GARRONE, in which they offered cruises from London to Baltic and Northern ports.

P&O's first onboard telephone was fitted on Parramatta in 1892.

In 1898 this policy of cooperation between private and public enterprise was abandoned, and the Post Office decided to move into direct competition or to grant licenses to local authorities in order to force the private company into selling its plant on reasonable terms when the licenses expired.

1899: An increasingly important nautical prospect, P&O carried 150,000 troops on eight ships during the Boer War which began in 1899.

'THE POSTAL HISTORY OF NEW SOUTH WALES (1788-1901)' General Editor John S. White, FRPSL Published by the Philatelic Association of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia ISBN 0 73162725 3

The new mail ships left from Tilbury where P&O established a base in 1903.

1904 -- P&O buys the liner Rome and turns it into its first full-time cruise ship, Vectis, and offers its first cruise holiday programme –- a first class only cruise with shore excursions arranged by Thomas Cook.

A large part of the effort of the administration was devoted to persuading the Treasury of the justice of any expenditure, however minor. It was the largest single employer in the country, and the negotiations with unions, which were recognized in 1906, took up ever more time and energy.

Between the two, the Thames Nautical Training College at Greenhithe and HMS Worcester welcomed its first P&O Cadets in 1907, under a new scheme initiated by the Company’s Chairman.

Even the Company’s longest serving chairman, Sir Thomas Sutherland, pondered the unanswerable, in 1910, when he posed the question of how long the P&O story would continue:

The Postmaster General consequently had control over the new technology, and licenses for 31 years expiring in 1911 were awarded to the telephone companies in return for a royalty of 10% of gross receipts.

In 1912 the Post Office acquired the telephone system whose development had been distorted and frustrated by the previous 30 years of policy.

Thomas Sutherland, P&O Chairman, Annual General Meeting, 1914

In 1915 Sir Thomas Sutherland stood down, having served the Company as its Chairman for longer than any before or after him.

Lord Inchcape (First Earl), Ordinary General Meeting, 13th December 1916

Lord Inchcape, AGM, 1917

1918 -- P&O acquires Orient Line.

For the remainder of the decade, Inchcape presided over a steady stream of acquisitions transforming P&O from a shipping line to an empire by the time peace returned in 1919.

Hon Lord Inchcape, AGM, 7th Dec 1921

1922 -- Orient Line resumes cruising post-World War I. Between the wars cruising becomes more popular, often using the newest ships in the fleet rather than the oldest.

Lord Inchcape, December 1923

By 1924, P&O was the largest shipping company in the world…

1929 -- P&O launches Viceroy of India, its first turbo electric-powered ship and the first to have an indoor swimming pool.

1930's -- Tourist class cruises begin in the early 1930s, followed by Pacific cruises and voyages to and from Australia.

P&O was the first with the 22,544-ton STRATHAIRD sailing from Sydney on 23 December 1932 on a cruise to Norfolk Island.

Sir William Currie, who had succeeded Lord Craigmyle in 1938, found himself at the helm of a Company at war and, as Director of the Liner Division at the Ministry of Transport, steering a wider merchant fleet through treacherous waters.

The revision was not complete until 1940, when the Post Office was overtaken by other issues.

The first services to Australia and China resumed in 1947, but it wasn’t until the end of the decade that the Company was back to anything approaching ‘business as usual’.

Sir William Crawford Currie, P&O Chairman, 1954

Such was the demand, the line commissioned two brand-new ships in 1955, Canberra and Oriana -- its last passenger liners, which brought the journey time to Australia down to just three weeks.

In 1960 the line bought the remaining stake in Orient Lines and renamed itself P&O-Orient Lines.

After starting with a P&O Cruises sister brand in 1963 overseeing archives and getting familiar with the shipping industry, he has since become the brand's go-to man for everything history related.

'CARRYING BRITISH MAILS OVERSEAS' By Howard Robinson, 1964 Published by George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London

1965: Short Sea routes are introduced with the roll-on/roll-off service from Hull to Rotterdam, a route that continues to this today.

The conclusion was drawn in 1966, when the Labor government decided to shift the Post Office from the civil service and to make it a public corporation like other nationalized industries.

For Australia the next major development in cruising came between March and October 1968 when the legendary HIMALAYA was based in Sydney and undertook eight consecutive cruises to the South Seas.

For most of its existence, the Post Office was a civil service department headed by a politician, the Postmaster General, but since 1969 it has been a public corporation on the lines of other nationalized industries such as British Railways.

As for what spurred Rob's lifelong dedications to the brand, in 1970 he went on to become a major custodian of a large portion of P&O Cruises' historical material.

P.E. Parry, Chairman 'P&O Lines', About Ourselves, Summer 1971

Individual shareholders approved and, by the close of ballot day on 20th November 1972, Geddes and half the board were out and Inchcape was in, occupying the role of Chairman that had been his grandfather’s over 50 years before.

In 1974 the line bought Princess Cruises; three years later it created P&O Cruises Australia.

In February 1979 Sea Princess began operating out of Australia, replacing Arcadia.

'ORIGINS, ORIENT and ORIANA' By Charles F. Morris Published 1980 by Teredo Books Ltd, Brighton, U.K ISBN 0 903662 07 8

In 1981 the recommendation of the Lever Committee was finally implemented, when the Post Office was split into two separate corporations with the formation of British Telecommunications.

1982 -- Canberra –- along with Cunard's QE2 and the Uganda from P&O Cruises educational cruise brand British India –- are requisitioned by the British Government for the Falklands War.

On 2nd June 1983 the shipping and property conglomerate, Trafalgar House, launched a hostile bid for P&O. The chairman, Inchcape, then on the point of retiring, stayed to tackle the crisis.

Sir Jeffrey Sterling, Chairman's statement in 1987

Mindful that Canberra would soon have to be retired, P&O ordered a new Oriana in 1995, which still sails as the oldest ship in the P&O Cruises' fleet.

In 1999 the much expanded Bovis Group, which had been part of P&O for 25 years, was sold following the successful flotation of Bovis Homes a year before.

2000 -- P&O Cruises takes delivery of a second new ship, Aurora.

Adonia entered service in 2001, far and away the smallest of the fleet holding just 710 passengers and measuring 30,000 tons.

2002 -- Princess Cruises Ocean Princess and Sea Princess switch to P&O Cruises and are renamed Oceana and Adonia.

In 2003 Carnival Corp. acquired ownership of the line, creating two separate brands: Princess Cruises and P&O Cruises Australia.

2005 -- A third brand new ship, Arcadia, joins P&O Cruises and a third Princess ship, Royal Princess, switches and starts operating as Artemis for P&O Cruises.

Sir John Parker, P&O Chairman, 'The Guardian', 11th February 2006

2008 -- P&O Cruises 115,000 ton ship, Ventura, enters service.

2010 -- The latest ship to be built for P&O Cruises, Azura, joins the P&O Cruises fleet.

2011 -- P&O Cruises bids a fond farewell to Artemis in April and welcomes its newest (and smallest) addition, Adonia, in May.

P&O Cruises, which celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2012, is not only the world's oldest cruise line in operation, it's also the U.K.'s biggest home-grown line.

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Who is P&O Cruises' Senior Vice President? Paul Ludlow (2016 –)