The formative years of P&O Cruises and its early struggle to survive owe much to the remarkable energy and negotiating skills of Arthur Anderson. A man of foresight he can also be credited with the invention of cruising.
In 1835 he started a newspaper in his native Shetland. To fill an empty space in the first issue he inserted an advertisement for an imaginary cruise to the islands off Scotland. The idea was radical but indicated the breadth of his thinking and foreshadowed what is now one of the fastest growing leisure industries in the world.
From that singular advertisement, P&O continued to develop our popular ‘classic’ voyages. In 1844 the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray sailed around the Mediterranean using these voyages as a guest of P&O’s. From this experience he wrote the popular book, ‘From Cornhill to Cairo.’
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Founded in 1837, this year we celebrate 179 years of heritage. The Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) first offered voyages known as ‘excursions,’ when passengers from England travelled with the Royal Mails to ports on the Iberian Peninsular and the Mediterranean, returning home on other P&O mail voyages.
The company really began in 1815 when Brodie McGhie Wilcox opened a ship-broking firm in Lime Street, London. After partnering with a former seaman, Arthur Anderson, the company called Wilcox and Anderson began trading with a small fleet of sailing ships between England and the Iberian Peninsular countries of Spain and Portugal. Wilcox and Anderson prospered and worked hard to secure return cargoes. The two countries allowed the firm to combine their colours – the blue and white of Portugal and the red and yellow of Spain, to form the company flag. This flag would become synonymous with passenger shipping services and cruises from England to the East and Australia.
In 1840 Wilcox and Anderson were awarded a new contract to extend their service to the Egyptian port of Alexandria via Malta. The new contract required that the voyage from England to Alexandria be accomplished in 15 days. The first vessel to open this service was the newly built 1,787-ton paddle-wheel steamship ORIENTAL, reflecting the Company’s arrival in the East. Hence the title Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company
Though P&O’s main focus was mail delivery, it soon became clear to both men that there was more to a life at sea than just getting from A to B. And so leisure cruising was born, with the very first leisure cruise departing London bound for the Mediterranean in 1844.
When P&O pioneered cruising from Australia in 1932 the new 23,000-ton mail steamer STRATHAIRD carried 1,100 passengers on the first cruise to Brisbane and Norfolk Island – a sailing which sold out in just one day.
From 1945 to 1972, it was from the decks of P&O ships that over 1 million United Kingdom migrants caught their very first glimpse of their new Australian homeland. Known as Ten Pound Poms, this mass arrival was a scheme devised by the Australian and British Governments to help populate Australia.
For crew members the crew office is a hub of activity. The team here is accountable for delivering a successful crew administration and compliance service to ensure that each crew member has all of the relevant documents that they require for joining one of our ships.
The crew services manager will support with ship’s clearance and other crew immigration issues as our ships travel the world. The team will also support crew members with regular everyday transactional HR items such as payroll queries, logistical queries and they will also offer first line advice on anything HR.
