William Bolts - Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp

Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp

The Imperial Company of Trieste and Antwerp was opened to public subscription in August 1781 to raise, nominally, half its capital in one thousand shares. In fact, the Company was seriously under-capitalized, as the other thousand shares held by the Proli group and Bolts were paid for by the nominal value of the assets of the former association. Bolts’s valuation of those assets was accepted at face value, but it was a fictitious valuation and in fact the new Company inherited the old association’s debts. It consequently suffered chronic lack of cash and had to resort to short term loans and bottomry bonds (for which the ships themselves were the collateral) at a premium of 30 to 35 per cent. Under these conditions, every voyage had to be a success for the Company to remain viable. Also under the terms of the agreement erecting the new company, Bolts ceded his charter to his Belgian partners in return for a loan of 200,000 florins (that is, his 200 shares in the Company) and the right to send two ships on his own account to China. The Imperial Asiatic Company under the direction of the Proli group focussed on the China tea trade. In 1781, 1782 and 1783 the price of tea in Europe, especially in England, had risen to unheard of levels. In 1781 and 1782 no Dutch or French ships appeared at Canton as a result of the American War, and in 1782 only eleven English, three Danish and two Swedish ships called there. Only four out of thirteen English ships returned safely in 1783 due to French naval activity. Attempting to seize the opportunity to make good profits, the Proli group sent five ships to Canton: the Croate, the Kollowrath, the Zinzendorff, the Archiduc Maximilien, and the Autrichien. However, the opportunity had been missed as, with the signing of an armistice in January 1783 the former belligerents were able to send their ships to Canton safely, and the summer of 1783 saw a total of thirty-eight ships there, including the five Imperial vessels. They had to buy tea at a high price, but when they returned to Ostend in July 1784 they had to sell at a low price on a glutted market, as well as having to pay for permission to return to that port. The price of tea at Ostend collapsed when the British Government introduced the Commutation Act in 1784, which reduced the tax on tea from fifty to ten per cent and made smuggling from the Netherlands unprofitable. The price of tea in Europe fell suddenly from 30 to 33 French sols to 11 to 14 sols, or around sixty per cent. Disastrously, a sixth ship, the Belgioioso, carrying a large amount of silver specie for the purchase of Chinese goods, foundered in a storm in the Irish Sea soon after departing Liverpool, where she was fitted out, on the voyage to Canton. Regardless of mounting losses, debts and liabilities, the Company invested in a further ship, the Kaiserliche Adler or Aigle Impériale, a giant of 1,100 tons, specially built for the Company by the Fiume shipyards, which was launched in March 1784, bringing the Company’s fleet to a total of nine vessels. Matters came to a head in January 1785 when the Company suspended all payments, and shortly afterwards it was declared bankrupt, bringing the Proli banking house down with it. Charles Proli committed suicide. An article in the Dublin press of 25 May 1786 recorded the sale of the dissolved company’s ships, Zinderdorf, Kollowrath, Kaunitz, Maximilian and Austrian, “together with their whole apparel, guns, stores, &c.” and observed: “The destruction of this company, as well as several others in Europe, is in a great measure owing to the commutation tea tax in England, and the advantages which territorial possessions throw in favour of the British company.”