Liverpool Black Ball Line Of Australian Packets letter head

James Baines & Co. of Liverpool was a British shipping company, most famous for the Liverpool Black Ball Line of Australian Packets, a fleet of packet ships running cargo and passenger services between

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

in the second half of the 1800s. It also traded in India and Crimea.

Founders

The company was founded and headed by James Baines and Thomas Miller Mackay with two junior partners, Joseph Greaves and John Taylor. Its office was located at 6 Cook Street, Liverpool. In 1858, Mackay established a separate office of the company in London. The legality of its business practices and the flexibility of its operations were controversial and often put the company under suspicion.

Name

In 1851 James Baines & Co. of Liverpool entered the

packet trade Generally, packet trade is any regularly scheduled cargo, passenger and mail trade conducted by boat or ship. The boats or ships are called " packet boats or packet ships" as their original function was to carry mail. A "packet ship" was originall ...

using the same name and flag as the New York company, despite its protests. Thus, for about twenty years, two "Black Ball lines" under separate ownership were operating in direct competition on the transatlantic

Symbols

The flag of the company was a red swallowtail with a black dot.

The Australian line

The company started with its 1851 purchase of the ship ''Marco Polo.'' As the demand for passenger transport to

Melbourne, Australia Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung/ or ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second most-populous city in Australia, after Sydney. The city's name generally refers to a metropolitan area also known ...

fueled by the 1850s

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, ...

grew, Baines commissioned a famous American shipbuilder,

Donald McKay Donald McKay (September 4, 1810 – September 20, 1880) was a Nova Scotian-born American designer and shipbuilder, builder of sailing ships, famed for his record-setting extreme clippers. Early life McKay was born in Jordan Falls, Shelburne ...

to build four clippers for the line. The line rapidly became one of the most popular of its time, rising to the level of its rival

White Star Line The White Star Line was a British shipping line. Founded out of the remains of a defunct Packet trade, packet company, it gradually grew to become one of the most prominent shipping companies in the world, providing passenger and cargo service ...

. As the gold rush traffic subsided after 1856, James Baines & Co.signed an agreement with the

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

colony in 1860 and ran a monopoly on that route, providing emigrants to the colony. In 1864 there was an unsuccessful attempt to merge with White Star and Gibbs, Bright and Co. of Liverpool. Some of the ships of the Line also carried British troops during the

Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...

and the

Indian Mutiny The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form ...

Fleet

James Baines & Co. operated some of the finest and most famous American

clipper A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. The term was also retrospectively applied to the Baltimore clipper, which originated in the late 18th century. Clippers were generally narrow for their len ...

ships at the time, such as '' Champion of the Seas'', '' Flying Cloud'', ''James Baines'', ''Lightning'', ''Indian Queen'', ''Marco Polo'', ''Sovereign of the Seas'' and many others. Some of the clippers Baines was able to buy at a very low price following the

Panic of 1857 The Panic of 1857 was a financial crisis in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. Because of the invention of the telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission ...

and the onset of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

. Besides the American vessels, the fleet of the Line contained a number of softwood vessels built in the

Maritime Provinces The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% of ...

of Canada as well as oak and teak ships built in England and Scotland. Although it is hard to estimate the exact size of the Line's fleet as they used charter ships extensively, at its peak in 1860, the Line had a fleet of 86 ships carrying cargo and passengers out to Australia. Overall, more than 400 ships carried British immigrants to Australia during the 1850s and 1860s with the help of James Baines & Co. In 1864, with 13 ships James Baines & Co. was the biggest single buyer of U.S. ships. Nla

The conditions on the Line's ships often were quite appalling. The ships were dirty and poorly ventilated. It was not uncommon to have 500 passengers cramped on one vessel. On one instance, there were documented 26 dead of the 460 passengers on board of ''Rockhampton'', when she arrived in

Keppel Bay Keppel Bay is a bay in Central Queensland, Australia, at the mouth of the Fitzroy River on the coast of the Coral Sea. Extent Keppel Bay extends from Station Point on Curtis Island () in the Gladstone Region to Zilzie Point at Zilzie () ...

on 12 October 1863 after the 116-day voyage from Liverpool.

Effect on immigration to Australia

The line carried more passengers to Australia than any other line. Just in 1865 and 1866 the Line brought 21,000 immigrants to Queensland. The overall traffic by the Line from England and Scotland to Queensland is estimated at 40,000 new settlers.

Decline

In 1866, Barned's Banking Company Ltd collapsed during the 1866 financial market crisis. The Line was one of its main debtors and was forced to sell many of its ships. The crisis also affected the financial state of the Queensland Government, reducing its ability to financially sustain the flow of immigrants. The Line carried on under the management of the successors of James Baines & Co., James Baines, Taylor & Co. and T. M. Mackay, Son & Co., relying on chartered ships to maintain its sailing business, but it finally ceased trading in 1871. Baines and his partners also owned several ships separate from each other.

References

External links

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Era of the Clipper Ships
{{DEFAULTSORT:James Baines and Co. Defunct shipping companies of the United Kingdom Defunct companies based in Liverpool 1852 establishments in England 1871 disestablishments in the United Kingdom