ABSTRACT
The remarkable expansion of the older branch of Alfred Booth and Company's activities during the period 1890–1914 was balanced by an equally rapid growth of its shipping interest. In the same way that the Surpass Leather Company became an important element in the American leather industry, so also did the Booth Steamship Company in the shipping trade of Liverpool. The founding of the first Booth Steamship Company in 1881 was marked by a revival of French competition, and for nearly two years the Chargeurs Reunis struggled unsuccessfully to obtain a foothold in the North Brazilian trade. Under the continued development of the Amazon valley, the gross tonnage of the new Booth Steamship Company doubled itself again between 1901 and the outbreak of the Great War, reaching a peak of 125,603 tons in 1910, excluding the 3,500 tons of its subsidiary, the Iquitos Steamship Company.
