ABSTRACT

In the Booth Steamship Company the majority of the shares continued to be held by Alfred Booth and Company, who remained the managers of the Line. While the fifteen years between 1865 and 1880 had seen a substantial growth of Alfred Booth and Company's leather trade, they represented a period of relative stagnation in shipping—the second of its major activities. It was in dealing with these early technical problems that the partnership found their close association with Philip and Alfred Holt of such great value. It was under the aegis of these two men that the Booth Line was created, and the relationship between it and the Holts’ Ocean Steamship Company remained an intimate one. With considerable foresight, the few steamships argued that competition would lie between steam and sail, rather than between rival steamship companies in the same trade.