History
The company was founded by William Wheelwright in London in 1838 and began its operations in 1840 when two steam ships Chile and Peru were commissioned to carry mail. Early ports of call were Valparaíso, Coquimbo, Huasco, Copiapó, Cobija, Iquique, Arica, Islay, Pisco and Callao. In 1846 the company expanded its routes to include Huanchaco, Lambayeque, Paita, Guayaquil, Buenaventura and Panama City.
In 1852 the company gained a contract for British Government mail to posts in western South America. Two direct routes were also established - Liverpool to Callao in 1868 and London to Sydney in 1877. In 1905 the London-Sydney route was sold to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which purchased the entire company in 1910. The name and routes were retained until Furness Withy purchased Royal Mail in 1965. Following the purchase the separate Pacific Steam Navigation Company structure was abolished and the vessels rebranded, effectively signalling the end of the Company.
Read more about this topic: Pacific Steam Navigation Company
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)