Coast Lines

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Liverpool-based Coast Lines and its twenty subsidiaries carried people, livestock, and cargo between the coastal ports of the British Isles. By the mid-1970s, most services had become part of P&O Ferries.

Researching Coast Lines

The geographical diversity and local operations of Coast Lines and its subsidiaries means that records are held in several national and regional archives.

• P&O’s archival records relating to Coast Line’s (CST) London-based subsidiaries are on permanent loan to Royal Museums Greenwich. The collection can be found and searched in RMG’s online catalogue.
• Records of the parent company and its Liverpool-based concerns (including Zillah Shipping) can be found in the collections of National Museums Liverpool.
• Some Irish material concerning the City of Cork Steam Packet Company can be found at Cork City and County Archives.
• Records of Belfast Steamship Company and other Belfast-related concerns can be found in the collections of National Museums Northern Ireland.
• Records pertaining to the Ayr Steamship Company, Burns & Laird Lines, and William Sloan and Company can be found at Glasgow City Archives.
• Tyne Tees Steam Shipping Company records are held at Tyne and Wear Archives.
• Material on the North of Scotland, Orkney & Shetland Shipping Company as well as the ‘North Company’ and the Aberdeen Steam Navigation Company can be found at Aberdeen University.

Before P&O

Coast Lines Ltd of Liverpool was formed in 1913 by the merger of three companies and was known initially by their joint names: Powell, Bacon, and Hough Lines. The name Coast Lines Ltd was adopted in 1917 when the company was taken over by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. After the dissolution of the Royal Mail Group in 1931, Coast Lines became independent once more under the chairmanship of former director Sir Alfred Read (1871–1955).

Between 1917 and 1960 Coast Lines acquired a controlling interest in a large number of coastal shipping companies, eventually numbering about twenty. Among the most important were: the British & Irish Steam Packet Company Ltd (acquired in 1917), City of Cork Steam Packet Company Ltd (1918), Belfast Steamship Company Ltd (1919), Burns & Laird Lines (acquired separately as Laird Line in 1918 and G & J Burns in 1920 and merged in 1922), Tyne Tees Steam Shipping Company Ltd (1943) and the North of Scotland, Orkney & Shetland Shipping Company (1961).

Geographically the Company’s activities spanned the whole of the British and Irish seaboard and extended to the Scottish and Channel Islands. By 1951, Coast Lines had a fleet of 109 ships which carried four million tons of cargo, more than half a million head of livestock and over a million passengers. It marked the high point in the British ‘internal’ (as distinct from international) cross-Channel, freight, and passenger trades, but over time many of the coastal routes declined. The British & Irish Steam Packet Company Ltd was sold to the Irish Government in 1965, together with its subsidiary, the City of Cork Steam Packet Company, and several other companies were closed in the 1960s.

The P&O years

Coast Lines was itself acquired by the P&O Group in February 1971. The takeover brought Coast Lines together with its long-time rival the General Steam Navigation Company, part of the P&O Group since 1920. Both companies were restructured to form P&O Short Sea Shipping, which later became P&O Ferries. By the mid-1970s most of the former Coast Lines identities and liveries had ceased to be used.

Selected bibliography

• Coast Lines by Norman Middlemiss (1998)
• ‘Coast Lines 1917–1970: The Rise and Fall of a Coastal Shipping Empire’ by Roy Fenton in Ships Monthly, October, November and December 1985.
• ‘The World’s Largest Coaster Fleet’ by E R Reader in Sea Breezes, February 1949.