Abstract
The Glasgow tramp shipping firm of Burrell & Son was well known for its ambitious approach to the trade. Henry Burrell (1866–1924), younger brother and junior partner in the firm, fell foul of his older brothers George and William and attempted to establish an independent business as a ship designer and shipowner. He developed an innovative new design of bulk carrier known as the straightback steamship. The Ben Earn of 1909 was not far removed from the bulkers that became dominant in post Second World War maritime trade. Henry Burrell created the prototype, but it took people with far greater capital and business skill to realize its true potential. This article provides a case study in the business of innovation in shipping in the early twentieth century. It demonstrates the tricky dynamics of sibling rivalry within a family business and offers an insight into the difficulties of establishing a successful business career with an underlying mental health problem. Burrell’s straightback steamship highlights how difficult it was, including potential and actual litigation, to put innovation in ship design into practice.
Keywords
The Glasgow tramp shipping firm of Burrell & Son is today remembered largely because its leading partner Sir William Burrell (1861–1958) left his extensive art collection to the public and now has a museum bearing his name. The firm was well known for its ambitious approach to the tramp trade and its ruthless approach to buying and selling ships. Less well known is the career of Henry Burrell (1866–1924), younger brother and junior partner in the firm, who fell foul of his older brothers and attempted to establish an independent business as a ship designer and ship owner. He developed an innovative new design of bulk carrier known as a straightback steamship, which, although it resulted in limited business success for himself, paved the way for future developments in the field. His story demonstrates the tricky dynamics of sibling rivalry within a family business and offers an insight into the difficulties of establishing a successful business career with an underlying mental health problem. Burrell’s straightback steamship also provides a telling case study in how difficult it was, including potential and actual litigation, to put innovation in ship design into practice.
A very junior partner
The firm of Burrell & Son was established in the 1850s and initially focussed on coastal trade. The business expanded under William Burrell (the son in the firm’s name) who then brought his own sons into the business. Both George (1857–1927) and William (of art collection fame) started work in the business at the age of 14. Born in 1866, Henry was nine years younger than George and five years younger than William, so by the time he joined the firm they had already established themselves. We do not know exactly when he joined the business, but he later stated that he was trained as a ship broker and was ‘for some years in the office when my father was alive’. 1
When their father died in 1885, George and William took over the business as equal partners. His will stated that they were to employ Henry, who was 19 at the time, at a fair wage until the age of 24, at which time he was to be given the option of buying into the business. 2 This duly happened and from 1890 he became a partner and referred to himself as a ship owner. 3
After their father’s death, William and George grasped the firm with both hands, and with youthful dynamism set about expanding the business. George was responsible for technical matters, while William ran the commercial side of things. It is not entirely clear what Henry’s role was in the business, but he seems to have been considered as a junior partner.
In June 1892 Henry joined the Incorporation of Hammermen, one of the old craft guilds in Glasgow. Many of the leading manufacturers and businessmen were members and it was a route to acceptance and success in the city’s business community. William and George had joined in 1880, along with their father and their other brother Adam (1859–1908), who was originally in the business but left to pursue a career in medicine. 4 Henry was therefore playing catch-up to a certain extent, and it looks as though he was trying to put himself on the same standing as his brothers. However, this had little effect on his status within the business and in fact he impressed his brothers so little that in April 1894 he was demoted from being a full partner, with rights to a share in the profits of the business, to simply being a ‘salaried partner’ drawing a wage. 5
The way the principals of Burrell & Son ran their business at this time was that each ship operated as a separate entity, with most of each ship’s 64 shares owned by the partnership. Several shares were sold to Burrell family members and other businessmen, with no more than a handful of shares owned by any one person. As senior partners William and George kept their shareholdings within the partnership rather than personally owning shares. 6 Henry’s new status now allowed him to invest on his own account and he immediately began to buy shares in the firm’s ships. Between April and December 1894, he purchased a total of 17 shares in 12 new ships that Burrell & Son were acquiring (Table 1). These were part of a major fleet expansion that took advantage of extremely low shipping rates, allowing Burrell & Son to order vessels from builders on the Clyde and the North East of England at very low prices. Other family members also invested in these ships, with their mother Isabella buying one or two shares in each of the ships, whilst Anne Jane, George’s wife, bought one share in each of four ships and sister Jessie also bought one share in Strathcarron. 7
Shares owned by Henry Burrell in ships operated by Burrell & Son.
Source: R.A. Cage: A Tramp Shipping Dynasty.
The only other clues we have of Henry’s activity within Burrell & Son are that he attended the launch of the Strathtay in March 1894 and the Strathgarry in July 1894. 8 Although he stated that he was trained as a shipbroker, we can reasonably assume from his later interests that he was also involved in technical matters and may well have been involved in the design and construction of this new batch of ships.
Despite his demotion, Henry was keen to rebuild his position and ‘remained in the hope of arranging a continuation of the partnership’. 9 However, in 1896, he became embroiled in a speculation that was to have disastrous consequences for himself and his relationship with his brothers and the firm.
A sweet contract turns sour
Henry Burrell had been in the habit of occasionally lunching with William Govan, who was involved in the sugar trade. One December day in 1895 the two men met each other travelling home on the train and got talking about the effect of the revolution in Cuba on the price of sugar. Govan was certain the crop would be curtailed and so push up the price of European beet sugar. With no experience of the sugar trade, Burrell was reluctant to get involved, but a few months later he met Govan in the street and was persuaded that ‘great benefits would be derived by him from acting upon his advice and purchasing sugar in large quantities for a rise which he anticipated would take place’. 10 Over the next few weeks Burrell entered into seven separate contracts with Stewart, Govan and Company for the purchase of a total of 2,550 tons of German beet sugar that was to be supplied following the harvest later in the year.
He freely admitted that he had no knowledge of the sugar trade and was relying solely on Stewart, Govan & Co. to manage the transactions for him. He was certainly not expecting to receive or trade such large quantities of sugar and was purely speculating to make a profit on the anticipated price increases over the course of the contract. Not surprisingly he quickly got cold feet and in May 1896 he informed Stewart, Govan & Co. that he was ‘desirous of terminating all these sugar ventures and of selling out at once as they had given him a great deal of mental anxiety’. Part of this anxiety was no doubt because under the rules of his partnership in Burrell & Son he was not permitted to personally speculate in ventures. As soon as William Burrell found out in June, Henry was very quickly removed: ‘[I]t was owing to this wretched sugar transaction that I came to leave the firm … my brother said it was impossible for me to remain.’ William confirmed that ‘I had insisted upon his leaving the office when I came to know about it’.
11
The finality of the situation was confirmed in the Edinburgh Gazette, which simply stated:
Mr Henry Burrell, Shipowner, Glasgow, ceased, as at 10th June current, to be a Partner of Burrell & Son, Shipowners and Shipping Agents, Glasgow. The Business will be continued as formerly by the remaining Partners.
12
Despite this, Govan had persuaded him to hold on, but as soon as claims for payments started to come in, he found himself in such a complicated pickle that he could find no way out. Each of the contracts had slightly different terms, which he simply could not understand, and he was unwilling to make the payments that began to be demanded of him. He appears initially to have avoided the situation and Stewart, Govan & Co. tried to chase him down at his own address, the firm’s office, his mother’s house and the Conservative Club where he was a member. To further complicate matters two of the contracts involved the London sugar brokers Ransohoff & Wissler and when they too began demanding payments, Henry had no option but to turn to his brother for help.
The whole thing was such an unholy mess that even William had trouble understanding it. It was unclear whether Henry had signed actual contracts or simply confirmation slips and Stewart, Govan & Co. proved evasive when it came to revealing the contracts. It was even less clear to what extent Ranshohoff and Wissler had any claim over Burrell. The bottom line was that at 11s 7½d per hundredweight he had paid well over the odds, and when the market failed to rise he was significantly out of pocket.
In order to get out of the mess, Burrell sued Stewart, Govan & Co. for a reduction or termination of the contracts on the basis that they had not acted as brokers, but as merchants going through a third party broker and their contracts were therefore ‘false and fraudulent’. 13 Stewart, Govan & Co naturally refuted this and when the sugar was eventually sold in London at a lower rate they took action against Burrell for the difference in price of £459.1.10. Their first port of call was the Beetroot Sugar Association in London, which had the authority to settle contract disputes involving its members. Their decision, perhaps unsurprisingly given their remit in supporting its members, was that Burrell should indeed be liable to pay the difference in price. 14
Separately, Ransohoff and Wissler took out three almost identical actions against Henry that even the judges had difficulty in telling apart. The Sherriff Court in Glasgow deemed that as Ransohoff and Wissler had not signed a contract directly with Burrell they had no right to pursue the action and this decision was later upheld on appeal at the Court of Session in Edinburgh at the end of 1897. 15
Meanwhile, the case against Stewart, Govan & Co. rumbled on in the Court of Session, with vast amounts of evidence eating up large amounts of court time, until the dispute was finally settled out of court in November 1898, with Henry agreeing to pay ‘a certain sum’. The details of this bargain are unknown, but it was clearly not beneficial to Burrell. 16
The whole thing had taken 18 months of wrangling in the courts, which had a serious effect on his health. His brother stated that ‘he was very ill in consequence of this affair’. Before June 1896 he was ‘ill for about a month … and he was ill from that time onwards for several months’. Henry claimed that it was this illness that led to his dismissal, although that was clearly only part of the story. In the months following his departure from Burrell & Son he sold all of his shares in the firm’s ships to Glasgow shipbroker Thomas Reid. 17 Whether his brothers forced him to sell in order to remove himself from the firm completely or whether he needed to raise capital to pay for the sugar and the ensuing legal battles is not clear, but it is doubtful that it was a voluntary act.
With his illness and the court cases dragging on, Henry was in no place to advance his career beyond Burrell & Son and indeed he stated that ‘since June 1896 I have not been in business’. 18 The level of commercial naivety and very public humiliation resulting from the sugar debacle would have precluded him from continuing as a shipbroker. Instead, once the dust had settled on the disputes, he set about pursuing his technical interests and began to establish himself as a ship designer.
The time of patents
Discussions concerning the 12 ships acquired by Burrell & Son in 1894 were begun the previous year, not long after Henry had become a partner, and it would be reasonable to assume that he was involved to some extent with their planning and design. They were fairly traditional looking vessels of the ‘three island’ design, but they were all fitted with the latest equipment to handle cargo quickly and efficiently. As The Marine Engineer reported of the Strathmore:
This vessel has water ballast fitted right fore and aft on the cellular system and is fitted with all modern improvements for the rapid loading and discharging of cargo, including six double cylindered steam winches, [and a] direct acting steam windlass.
19
It is likely that work on these vessels sparked Henry’s interest in cargo handling and vessel efficiency, which was to be his main focus over the coming years. Between 1899 and 1906 he filed a total of seven patents in the UK and four in the United States (Table 2). These stretched the boundaries of ship design and cargo handling beyond even the most modern designs that Burrell & Son had purchased.
Patents awarded to Henry Burrell.
Source: Espacenet Patent Search https://www.epo.org/
Robin Craig suggests that Henry Burrell was influenced by developments in Great Lakes steamers. 20 In the late 1880s a new type of vessel known as a ‘whaleback’ was introduced, which was designed to carry large capacities of bulk cargo in vessels that had a cigar-shaped hull that was designed to be extremely seaworthy. This sparked a wave of innovation as American builders sought to maximize cargo carrying capacity and reduce costs, whilst avoiding the whaleback patent. 21 The whaleback was followed by the turtleback, which had a more traditional deck, but highly curved, and the monitor, which had a sharply angled deck. In 1892 another innovation, the ‘straightback’ steamer, was introduced. As its name suggests it had a straight hull with no sheer. It was similar to the whaleback in that it had a rounded deck, but it also had a straight stem and a small forecastle. Details of these vessels began to appear in the British technical press and one whaleback even visited Liverpool in 1891, where it created quite a stir. As a result, the Doxford shipyard in Sunderland began experimenting with similar ideas and in 1893 launched the first of its ‘turret’ ships. 22 These were a variation of the whaleback ships, which had a rounded deck, but topped with a continuous turret of about half the breadth of the ship, running along the entire length. Henry Burrell would have been aware of the Great Lakes innovations and the turret ships through the technical press, as well as through Burrell & Son’s relationships with North East shipbuilders.
His first patent, for ‘Improvements in the construction of cargo steamers’, was clearly influenced by these developments, not least because he proposed to call the new design a ‘straightback’ steamer. It was a design for a ship with large cargo holds, large hatches and integral cranes, rather than derricks, that would allow for rapid loading and unloading of bulk cargoes. The design of the hull was similar to a turret ship in that it had a large raised ‘trunk’ a third of the width of the ship running down the length of the hull. However, in Burrell’s design this was incorporated onto a more traditional shape of deck. The trunk was straight, running parallel to the keel and flush with the poop and forecastle, while the deck had a sheer. The trunk acted like a giant girder that gave great structural strength, enabling the structure of the holds below to be simplified to provide greater space for cargo. The machinery was placed aft, the officers’ accommodation was in the poop deck and the crew quarters in the forecastle, leaving the entire length of the ship clear of obstructions to make cargo handling more efficient. Inside the hold there was a system of strengthening pillars that could be used to subdivide the space using wooden cargo boards that slotted into channels on the pillars.
This design, Burrell claimed, would greatly increase cargo capacity in proportion to the size and cost of the ship, it allowed for a better distribution of cargo in the centre of the ship, leading to better stability and offered ‘accelerated despatch in loading and discharging’, leading to much greater efficiency of operation by enabling a much quicker turnaround time in port. The patent was illustrated with a design for a vessel 520 ft long, 62 ft wide and 32’ 9” deep, with seven cargo holds and nine cranes, six on the port side and three on the starboard. This would have given a cargo capacity of approximately 12,000 tons.
This patent was approved in March 1900 and within a few months Burrell had followed this up with a supplementary patent relating to ‘Improvements in the loading and discharging equipment of cargo steamer’. In the original patent he had said that the cranes could be operated by ‘steam, compressed air, hydraulic, electrical, or other motive power’. The new patent was specifically for electric cranes. The design was a for a straightback steamer, which had six pairs of electric cranes. The construction of the cranes was such that they were integrated into the structure of the cargo hold bulkheads to provide greater strength and to allow their hollow trunks to extended down to the bottom of the holds to act as ventilation shafts. The twelve cranes could act ‘in concert’ to facilitate rapid loading and unloading. By having banks of cranes on either side it meant that the ship could unload on both sides at once. This made it ideal for the coaling of other ships lying alongside. The patent was illustrated with the ship loading a battle ship on one side and a first-class cruiser on the other. The rapid expansion of the steam navy at the end of the nineteenth century meant that supplying coal to warships across the Empire was a major issue for the Royal Navy. Burrell clearly saw his invention as a sort of mobile coaling station that could supply the needs of the navy around the globe.
Burrell’s next patent, in 1901, was for further ‘Improvements in cargo steamers’. His idea was to use the electric cranes on the deck to facilitate the operation of large cargo hatches on hinges. Traditionally, cargo vessels covered their hatches with planks of timber that then had a tarpaulin spread over it to keep it weathertight. This was an awkward and time-consuming process. What Burrell proposed was having a series of large hinged ‘doors’ covering the hatch that could be lifted up and down by the cranes and instead of using a tarpaulin the hatch covers had rubber seals to keep them weathertight. This arrangement was intended to further increase the efficiency of cargo ships by reducing the time and manpower required to gain access to the cargo holds.
A further patent in 1903 updated the hatch cover design with a more sophisticated and secure closing mechanism that improved on the rubber seals. A system of wedges and sockets locked the hatch covers securely in place. The hatch covers themselves were also strengthened so that there was no need for additional removable beams and supports, leaving the hatchway clear of obstructions as soon as the covers were lifted.
Another patent in 1903 described a new system for a ‘hopper bunker for steamers’. This relatively simple concept was to place a hopper bunker above the boiler room and use gravity to deliver coal directly to the boilers. Again, the motivation for the invention was to increase the operating efficiency of a freighter by automatically delivering coals to where they were needed and so ‘reduce labour and the number of stokers and trimmers required’.
In 1905 he patented some further ‘Improvements in cranes for cargo steamers’, which updated his previous patent for electric cranes with improvements to the proposed mechanism that would increase stability when the jib was abnormally outreached. It consisted of a ball bearing support at the first deck level combined with a foot step, which held the crane in place. This arrangement ensured ‘freedom of turning movement of the post and maximum resistance to tilting of the crane post under heavy load and extreme outreach of jib’.
Burrell’s final patent was for further ‘Improvements in the construction of ships’, which updated the structural design of his earlier straightback steamer concept. He proposed strengthening the structure with the introduction of double bottoms and sloping corner tanks at the bottom of the holds, plus a cantilever web construction that provided transverse and longitudinal stiffening for the ship’s sides and upperworks so that ‘the whole of the ship’s structure is thoroughly supported without the aid of stanchions or beams in the cargo space’. This did away with the initial idea of internal strengthening pillars to leave the holds entirely unobstructed for bulk cargoes.
The American patents were condensed versions of the British patents for the initial straighback design, the use of electric cranes and hatchcovers, and the hopper bunker for feeding the boilers.
What Burrell had created was an almost exact blueprint for a modern bulk carrier, with the machinery and accommodation aft leaving the rest of the ship with large unobstructed holds that were accessed by large, easily removed hatch covers and serviced by electric cranes. Double bottom tanks provided the capacity for water ballast. Everything was about making a ship as efficient and cost effective as possible, from initial construction costs to increased cargo carrying capacity, turnaround time in port and reduced manning on board. He had anticipated by more than half a century the basic design that would become standard for the transport of bulk cargo around the world.
From patent to practice
In the first patent applications Henry Burrell listed his address as the family home at 4 Devonshire Gardens in Glasgow’s west end, where he lived with his mother. It is not clear to what extent he was in business at this stage, but by 1903 he had taken modest premises at 73 Robertson Street, in the heart of Glasgow’s commercial docklands. 23 Despite at this time not actually owning any ships or even shares in ships, Burrell still styled himself on the patents as a ‘shipowner’ rather than as an engineer or naval architect. He clearly had a knowledge of engineering and ship design but was not a member of either the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland or the Institution of Naval Architects. This was a little strange for someone seeking to enter this line of business.
Towards the end of 1904, with the patents in place, he began to market his design (Figure 1). He wrote to the technical press and both the Syren & Shipping and Page’s Weekly published features on the Straightback steamer. Burrell had by now developed a range of five different vessels from 13,000 tons to 2,000 tons deadweight and claimed that efficiency savings of up to 25 per cent on conventional ships could be made, which if taken across the British shipments of ore and coal, could result in a saving of £5 million per annum. These were heady claims, but Syren & Shipping was convinced, stating that the savings were ‘quite within the region of the possible if not the probable and pending’. 24 The Electrical Journal also included a piece that focussed on the electrical innovations in the design, including electric lights attached to the cranes so that cargo could be loaded and unloaded at night. 25
Henry Burrell’s patent straightback steamship, as illustrated in Page’s Weekly, 1904.
The Syren & Shipping concluded its piece by stating that ‘the “Straightback Steamer” has certainly ingenuity to commend it, and if it effects the economies claimed for it by the inventor, there should soon be a number of these vessels in commission’. 26 All Burrell needed to do was to get ship owners to take up his idea. To this end he contracted with the London shipbrokers Angier Brothers to seek out a potential buyer who would be prepared to build a ship to his design. The opportunity came at the end of 1906 through the Norwegian ship owner Hans Fredriksen. He came from a family of ship owners in Sandefjord and was a pioneer in the introduction of steamships into the Sandefjord fleet. In 1906 he moved operations to Oslo and built up a steam cargo shipping business. 27 He agreed to build a straightback steamer on the basis that the ship would be chartered out for four years and that at the end of this period another buyer could be sought. He then arranged with the Rotterdam ship broking firm of Gebruder van Uden, who agreed to charter the ship for four years and then buy it for an agreed sum at the end of the charter period. As an experienced ship owner, Fredriksen was clearly aiming to minimize the risk of purchasing a ship of this innovative design, firstly by building one of Burrell’s smaller versions of the design and by guaranteeing a charter income and a future sale. The terms of the charter were that the 5,000 tons of cargo were to be discharged in under 36 hours by the electric cranes and that the vessel should sail at ten knots when fully laden. Fredriksen was to be paid £950 per month by Gebruder van Uden and in turn Fredriksen was to pay Angier Brothers 2½ per cent of the freight revenue during the initial charter period.
By the summer of 1907 construction was under way and the Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects noted that:
A steamer 305 ft in. by 45 ft 9 in. by 24 ft., [is] being built by the Sunderland Shipbuilding Company, to the design of Mr Henry Burrell, which embodies several interesting features; the double bottom is sloped up the sides of the vessel so as to form a self-trimming trough for coal or grain, and the upper works are arranged so as to give free flow for bulk cargo; while the sides, trunk way, and decks are so supported by what, for want of a better name, may be called cantilever webs, and by comparatively closely-spaced bulkheads, that stanchions are unnecessary.
28
The new steamer, Ocland, was launched by Mrs Fredriksen on 26 August 1907 and was delivered by October. The Marine Engineer carried a notification of the launch and stated that ‘judging from the dimensions, deadweight carrying, and light draught of water, [she] is destined to make a name for herself in the money-earning ventures of the future.’ 29 It also reported that Burrell and the British Corporation survey ‘confidently expected’ that the vessel would be able to meet the stipulations in the charter.
Unfortunately, this confidence was a little misplaced. On the very first voyage to Rotterdam the cranes failed. Repairs were made, but on the second voyage the cranes failed again and were taken off at Rotterdam for further repair. They were refitted again after the third voyage at the end of December 1907, but they remained problematic. As a result, Gebruder van Uden claimed that the ship was not cargo ready and tried to get out of the charter agreement and Angier Brothers sued Fredriksen for loss of revenue. 30 In the end, Fredriksen kept ownership of the Ocland and the troublesome cranes were replaced with more traditional derricks. This was hardly the demonstration of success that Burrell had hoped for and not surprisingly there were no other takers willing to construct another vessel along similar lines. Instead, Burrell decided to take matters into his own hands.
The Straightback Steamship Company
In October 1908, Henry Burrell negotiated with Archibald McMillan of Dumbarton to build a straightback steamer a little larger than Ocland at 318.4 ft long by 49.3 ft wide, with a deadweight of 5,700 tons. Construction started at the end of the month, but progress was hampered by delays in completing the plans. On several occasions the surveyor reported ‘work being held up through want of plans’ and some work also had to be scrapped or re-worked as it had been installed before the plans had been approved. It appears that the yard struggled with the novel design, and after a fairly difficult build the ship was launched on 2 June 1909 without any ceremony. 31 After a lengthy outfit period in which the electric cranes again proved particularly troublesome, ‘one fitting after another giving way’, the ship was finally completed at the end of January 1910. This was an extraordinarily long construction period for a cargo vessel of this size. Trials were undertaken on 4 February and the final classification certificate was approved on 23 February (Figure 2). 32
Ben Earn, probably on its sea trails on the Clyde in early 1910.
Archibald McMillan initially financed the construction of the ship, but on 10 January 1910 Burrell floated the Straightback Steamship Company to own the ship, with capital of £30,000 in 150 preference shares of £100 and 150 ordinary shares of £100. 33 Investors bought shares in the company, while the company owned all 64 shares in the ship. This structure, instead of a single ship company, implies that the company had the ability and intent to expand. The Glasgow Register of Shipping details the investors who took out mortgages against the ship, but does not detail the specific number of shares they purchased. The full list of investors is given in Table 3.
Investors in the Straightback Steamship Company.
Source: NRS, CE59/11/92, Glasgow Register of Shipping, 1909.
Hugh Reid, Archibald Colville and William Chrystal were among the leading industrialists in the West of Scotland and their involvement, even at a modest level, was a fillip to Burrell’s venture. Several of the investors were existing investors in Burrell & Son ships and others were clearly contacts of Archibald McMillan. Henry’s mother and brothers showed their faith in him with major investments. The largest investor, however, was the Rotterdam shipowner Cornelis van’t Hoff, who was a partner in Gebruder van Uden.
On 28 January, Burrell entered into an agreement with van’t Hoff whereby the two were appointed joint managers of the company, with van’t Hoff taking charge of ‘all matters relating to the employment of the vessel, and in particular he was empowered to employ any shipbrokers or insurance brokers’. 34 This was an odd arrangement given Gebruder van Uden’s experience with the Ocland, and from Burrell’s perspective proved ultimately to be disastrous.
When the Ben Earn entered service in February 1910, its novel design was noted in the technical press. The Shipbuilder carried a feature and The Engineer made the following observations:
There has just been tried on the Clyde a large steamer built by Messrs. A. McMillan and Son, Dumbarton, whose equipment includes a number of powerful and very rapid working electric jib cranes, the control of which is from an operator’s cage situated near the top of each derrick post. When the ship is under way the long, massive jibs are stowed flat on deck. Grabs of a specially effective and capacious type are employed, and all the hold interiors are arranged with a view to rapid clearance (Figure 3).
35
This view clearly shows the electric cranes and the grab stowed on deck on the starboard side. It also shows that Ben Earn was not fitted with Henry Burrell’s patent hatch covers.
When it later docked at Burntisland it ‘attracted a lot of attention’ for its novel construction and the Fifeshire Advertiser noted that:
It is claimed that the whole cargo can be loaded without shore labour and can be discharged by means of two powerful electric deck cranes which work two large grab tubs. These cranes with their girder style of jibs give the vessel a strange appearance, and by means of them the whole cargo of between 5000 and 6000 tons can be discharged at Rotterdam in a period ranging from 60 to 72 hours.
36
The newspaper was not overly impressed with these claims, however, noting that ‘the time loading was nothing exceptional’ (Figure 4).
Ben Earn at Burntisland East Docks in 1910, showing the cranes in operation. ‘Another steamer of a more novel type arrived on Sunday morning – the Ben Earn, and from its construction it attracted a lot of attention’.
The Ben Earn was designed to carry coal from Hull to Rotterdam and over the next year or so made regular trips between Rotterdam and other North East England ports. It also occasionally ventured further afield, carrying, for example, iron ore from North Africa to Glasgow. It was noted as being an easy ship to operate and did not have the reliability problems that Ocland had suffered. It did, however, have its fair share of being knocked about, twice colliding with other steamers in Hull and damaging its bow after striking the pier at Nantes. 37 Its double bottom water ballast tanks were also damaged by stevedores in Rouen, who were not used to the electric cranes and grabs. 38
In 1911, Ben Earn was chartered by the Dominion Coal Company, at the rate of £1,100 per month, to transport coal from its mines in Nova Scotia. Burrell had strangely taken little active involvement in the company and after this arrangement had been entered into, he ‘retired from the management’ leaving van’t Hoff in sole charge. He also appointed the Glasgow shipbrokers Biggart, Fulton and Grier as his local agent to look after his interests. 39
On 29 April 1911, Ben Earn left the Clyde in ballast for its new route and, after what must have been an anxious journey, limped into St John’s Newfoundland desperately in need of coal, ‘having used all her woodwork for fuel’. 40 After taking on a full cargo at Sydney, Nova Scotia it sailed down the coast towards St. John, New Brunswick. On the evening of 16 June, in dense fog, it struck rocks near Cape Negro at the southern tip of Nova Scotia and, despite travelling at dead slow speed, the bottom was ripped out and the ship was wrecked. 41
Although the Ocland continued to operate for many years in a modified form, Burrell’s dream of the straightback steamer becoming a dominant feature of the bulk trade was over. The accident had nothing to do with the design of the ship and its many innovations and was simply a navigational error, but it prevented the Ben Earn from proving its worth in what could have been an ideal market. The growing mining operations in Nova Scotia needed a fleet of steamers to transport the coal and Ben Earn’s cranes would have enabled it to unload at Canada’s yet undeveloped ports. 42
Litigation, litigation, litigation
Towards the end of 1911, a liquidator was appointed, and The Straightback Steamship Company was voluntarily wound up. It is not clear to what extent Henry Burrell carried on business thereafter, but he certainly did not come away from the Ben Earn with any money. In October 1911 he declared that ‘I had little available cash – in fact none’. 43 He did, however, retain his office and he still listed himself as a ship owner and as proprietor of the Straightback Steamship Company in the Post Office directories until 1923. However, according to Lloyd’s Register he did not own any further ships. He travelled to New York in 1913 and it is tempting to think that this may have been in connection with attracting further interest or buyers for straightback steamers, although we simply do not know his motives. 44 He also continued to attend the annual meetings of the British Corporation Register of Shipping in Glasgow, 45 which would suggest that he was still involved in the industry to some extent, but there are no further records that shed light on what business he might have been carrying out. What seems to have taken up most of his time was fighting various actions through the courts.
The first cases were related to his mother’s death in February 1912. Henry had lived with his mother rent-free for many years. When she moved away for the sake of her health he stayed on and took responsibility for running the household. He still expected her to foot the bills, but he did hand over one share in the Straightback Steamship Company as security. After she died, he was given permission to stay on until such times as the house was to be sold. However, when the time came, he refused to move out, claiming that he had tenancy rights since he had ‘paid’ his mother the £100 face value of the share certificate. His bothers William and George were trustees of the estate and took out an action at the Sherriff Court in Glasgow to evict him so that the property and furnishings could be sold. The Sherriff deemed that there was no contract that allowed him to stay and so he should be evicted. Henry appealed this decision at the Court of Session in October 1913 but failed to overturn the verdict. 46 We have seen from the sugar debacle that he was mentally fragile and it appears that he became unstable again at this time. He behaved in a hostile manner and ‘in a state of excitement’ to the lawyers. He secretly removed the ‘For Sale’ sign and obstructed the auctioneer from gaining access into the property. When he was eventually locked out, he promptly broke in again through a skylight with the help of a couple of ‘fighting men’. When he did finally leave, he helped himself to copious amounts of silverware, a tapestry and various other items, which William and George then had to recover through the courts. 47 Henry then took out what appears to be a vindictive legal action against his brothers.
All of Isabella Burrell’s children had been left £2,500 in her will, but due to the depressed economy at that time the assets did not cover the full amount and an interim payment of £1,250 was made. Both William and George’s wives had purchased some of their mother in law’s shares in several Burrell & Son shipping companies as part of the winding up of the estate. Henry complained that they had received preferential prices for them, which devalued the estate and thereby compromised his legacy. He took out a case against his bothers, initially at Glasgow Sherriff Court and then on appeal to the Court of Session. The final judgement in early 1915 was that the shares were indeed purchased legally and at the same price as other purchasers. Henry was then faced with legal costs of over £340. 48 He appealed this decision and again it went all the way to the Court of Session before finally concluding in May 1916 with the appeal being turned down and a further £105 added to the costs. The words of the defence lawyer ring all too true: ‘[T]he vexatious tactics by which Mr Henry Burrell is delaying ejection and keeping back the realization of his estate will not benefit him’. 49 He would have been far better off leaving graciously and getting what he could from the legacy.
Meanwhile, another set of actions had begun relating to Cornelis van’t Hoff and his firm’s involvement with straightback steamships. In April 1913, van’t Hoff sued the liquidator of the Straightback Steamship Company for £500, ‘being the amount of the declared dividend which had been set apart for him by the liquidator’. The liquidator then made a counter claim against him ‘for a sum considerably in excess of the amount of the dividend’. Part of the issue was that van’t Hoff had insured the vessel in Rotterdam and had collected the insurance from the underwriters and although a dividend was due to him from the company the liquidator had withheld payment until the insurance had been received.
Following on from this, Gebruder van Uden put in another claim in December against Henry Burrell for £1,500 plus £170 expenses, which they alleged was ‘owing to them in connection with a joint adventure concerning a steamer called the SS Ocland’. Burrell appealed against this and in turn took action against Gebruder van Uden for ‘the sum of £1,500 or such other sum as may be found to be due to him’ from their management of the Ben Earn between February 1910 and June 1911. Gebruder van Uden then responded by seeking to arrest £2,850 from Burrell as security until the conclusion of the original case relating to Ocland. 50 Burrell managed to get this reduced to £1,200 on appeal, but by now the case was extending beyond the start of the First World War and in November 1914 Burrell appealed to the Court of Session that van’t Hoff had business interests in Germany and that dealing further with the case was contrary to the Trading with the Enemy legislation. This was initially refused, but by January 1916 the courts had adjudicated that van’t Hoff was indeed an enemy alien and that all action should be suspended until the conclusion of the war and the embargo on Burrell’s assets was lifted. 51
Shortly after the end of the war Burrell tried to claim damages against van’t Hoff by making a claim against the steamer Maashaven. This was a Dutch steamer in which van’t Hoff owned shares and which had been requisitioned by the British government in the war. Burrell sought to arrest the ship and the £20,000 that he reckoned had been earned through the requisition contract. Burrell took the case to the Court of Session under the Trading with the Enemy Act, claiming that the ship was owned by enemy aliens. The court refused this application on the grounds that the vessel was Dutch and therefore not enemy property, that van’t Hoff did not own the vessel, but merely owned shares in it, that the vessel was requisitioned by the British government and not seized as a prize and so had an obligation to return it to the owners, and finally that as the vessel was located in England the Scottish courts had no jurisdiction over the vessel. All in all, it was a hopeless case, but Burrell was determined to see it through, and by all accounts he had been making a nuisance of himself for quite some time trying to make a case against the Maashaven:
Both before and after the said vessel was requisitioned as aforesaid, the applicant was in frequent communication with various departments and officials of H. M. Government, including the Admiralty, the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Shipping, and the Procurator General in Prize.
52
In the end, Burrell was ordered to pay £124.5.9, presumably for loss of revenue caused by his actions or for legal costs incurred in trying to secure the release of the ship.
53
By June 1921, he had still not paid up and the Maashaven Steamship Company began legal proceedings to sequestrate his estate in order to realize the money. This was necessary because Burrell was now insolvent and had been rendered bankrupt.
54
Burrell naturally appealed against this action. Whether through a lack of money or a lack of faith in the legal profession it is not clear, but Burrell was now acting as his own counsel. This was a bad idea. The court quickly dismissed his appeal and ordered him to pay costs. Not only that, but he was censured by the judge for his incompetence in presenting his case:
The Lord President said it was always unpleasant to apply ordinary rules of procedure to a litigant who did not protect himself in the usual way by employing agent and counsel, and so equipping himself with reasonable knowledge of procedure. In the present case the position of the pursuer had been made the subject of appeals to the Court both from the bar and, as regarded by his Lordship, personally to a considerable extent by correspondence from him. The Court had carried its indulgence to him in its extremest limit, and his Lordship did the same with regard to the letters upon the subject addressed to him. No practical course remained to their Lordships to follow except to refuse the appeal in respect that no argument was presented in support of it.
55
This was a strong rebuke from Scotland’s most senior judge and left Burrell with no further avenue to pursue his claim against van’t Hoff. The issue of legal expenses then dragged on through the courts until the end of the year. 56
Burrell had come out of this whole affair embarrassed and broke. The pursuit of justice seems to have taken over his life with yet another reference to the volume of correspondence implying that he had become a man obsessed. He came away from the process thoroughly defeated and seemingly in a poor state of mental health.
Burrell finally removed the Straightback Steamship Company from his listing in the Glasgow Post Office Directory in 1924, but he still referred to himself as a ship owner. By this time his physical health had begun to deteriorate and in early 1924 he contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. 57 As the disease developed, he was moved to Nordrach on Dee Sanatorium, in Banchory in the North East of Scotland. This was a specialist private clinic for the open air treatment of lung diseases and it is likely that William Burrell, despite their earlier falling out, footed the bill for his younger brother who hardly had the wherewithal for this kind of exclusive treatment. 58
Henry Burrell died at the sanatorium on 15 July 1924. 59 He had less than £400 to his name, plus 63 remaining shares in the Straightback Steamship Company, which were valued at £1.15 each. 60
A forgotten legacy
Sir William Burrell is very well known and has had much written about his art collection and his business interests. In contrast, Henry Burrell has almost disappeared from history. The biography of William Burrell makes only one brief and inaccurate mention of Henry and he does not even make it onto the family tree. 61 In the biography of William Burrell’s daughter, Henry is disposed of in three short misleading lines. 62 He is also strangely absent from any surviving family photographs. His ships are given a brief mention in Phil Thomas’s British Ocean Tramps, Robin Craig mentions them in a footnote and David Burrell made a passing reference to them in a letter to Sea Breezes. 63 Other than that there has been nothing written on him or his shipping interests.
It is fair to say that Henry Burrell was not the greatest businessman or the greatest engineering genius. He simply lacked the business acumen that his brothers possessed and to a certain extent he suffered from youngest child syndrome. His brothers had long established themselves in the firm before he was able to make a mark and when he didn’t live up to their high expectations he was demoted and then dismissed. Sentimentality played no part in William Burrell’s business. The sugar speculation exposed Henry as naïve and took a severe toll on his health.
Henry Burrell was undoubtedly a prickly character and exhibited some extreme forms of behaviour. When pushed during the court case relating to his mother’s estate, the Burrell & Son lawyer and family friend revealed that: ‘He is peculiar; in fact, he had a severe brain affection when he was a child and he never recovered from it.’ He also seemed to have a deep-seated resentment that he did not receive his rightful patrimony by being excluded from the family business. His family retained an affection for him, however, and helped him out financially – he lived rent free with his mother and following her death William Burrell offered him an annuity of £250, but this affection does not seem to have been reciprocated. His conduct towards his mother ‘vexed her very much’ and in the end she found it hard to live in the same house as him ‘because he nagged and worried her so’. 64 The vindictive legal action against his brothers also demonstrates a spiteful antagonism towards them.
In business terms he was forever on the back foot after the sugar speculation. He did not have a sufficiently good name to raise enough capital to make a real success of his straightback steamships. It was unfortunate that the cranes on Ocland proved problematic as this was purely an issue with the crane manufacturer and not with the concept of the vessel. For the short time that it operated the Ben Earn proved to be a good ship, but after it sank there was no way Burrell was going to be able to convince backers to have confidence in the design or that he had the business pedigree to be entrusted with more capital. Without formal technical training he was also always going to struggle to establish himself as an engineer and despite developing some technically accomplished patents he remained separate from Glasgow’s scientific and engineering establishment. Instead of pursuing business interests he sank into a decade of bitter legal fighting that took a further toll on his physical and mental health. To rub salt into the wound Burrell & Son sold most of their fleet for vast profits in the war, leaving William and George semi-retired and free to enjoy their spoils by building up their art collections.
Despite all this Henry Burrell still deserves more credit for his contribution to the development of the bulk carrier. The Ben Earn is not so far removed from the bulkers that are such a feature of today’s maritime trade. Henry Burrell created the prototype, but it took several decades and people with far greater capital and business skill to realize its true potential.
Burrell’s straightback steamship provides an interesting case study in how hard it was to put innovation in ship design into practice. No matter how ground-breaking the design and the protection afforded by the patents, without significant backing and influential support it was incredibly difficult to gain much traction in the industry. New patents were filed on a regular basis, but very few made it into production. With family connections, a number of important investors and a shipbuilder willing to take a punt, Burrell achieved more than most, but still could not make a success of it. Bad luck and poor health played their part, but breaking into a conservative shipping market was always going to be hard. 65 It is significant that although the Ocland and Ben Earn were built in British shipyards, a Norwegian was the owner of the first vessel, and a Dutchman the major investor in the second.
The story of Henry Burrell is also significant in demonstrating just how much an integral part the law courts played in the business of shipping. With so much time and effort spent pursuing claim and counter-claim, Burrell was diverted from the main thrust of his business, which in part led to his downfall. Meanwhile, those more adept or with better lawyers were able to use the courts to their advantage to boost their profitability. Henry Burrell may have ultimately failed, but his story provides a valuable insight into sibling rivalry and the difficult business of innovation in shipping at the turn of the twentieth century.