History

he early history of The Shipowners’ P&I Club is bound up in the history of its creators, the Holman family of Topsham, Devon, who were resident in the town for many generations from the mid 17th Century.

Although the name ‘Holman’ became synonymous with shipping in the early and mid 1800s, the family itself had not been connected with the sea until Thomas (1771-1822) and Richard (1774-1824), two sons of an iron founder, became Master Mariners. Richard earned recognition by resisting the capture of his ship by a French privateer, but it was Thomas who was the father of John Bagwell Holman (1800-1863), the enterprising character who laid the foundations of the shipping and insurance enterprise which, in its way, survives to this day.

John Bagwell Holman decided that, like his father, he would follow a maritime career. He went to sea at the age of 12, coming ashore 25 years later as a Master Mariner. Unlike his father, he left the sea not only with a professional title, but also as the proud owner of a number of ships. Ashore, he enlarged his shipping interests both as a shipowner and a shipbuilder, building not only his own vessels but also ships for other local owners.

Having achieved success as a sailor, a Master Mariner, a shipowner and a shipbuilder, John Holman turned his attention to the management of his fleet and in particular to the cost of hull insurance which, at the time, was very expensive, due to the lack of competition.

ohn Holman set up one of the first so-called ‘hull clubs’, The West of England Marine Insurance Association in 1832, to undertake the insurance of hull risks on a non-profit-making basis. Presumably the venture was a success because, in 1838, he formed another club, Exeter Shipping Insurance Association, and the two together were known as ‘The Western Clubs’.

The popularity of hull clubs started to decline in the 1840s due to greater competition from Lloyd’s. Indeed some commentators have maintained that the hull clubs had all but disappeared by 1850, but the Western Clubs were clearly in operation some ten years later, as evidenced by a copy of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping carrying the legend ‘Western Clubs Marine Insurance, Topsham’, 1860.

While Lloyd’s underwriters were now willing to write hull risks competitively, they were not prepared to cover the new third party liabilities of shipowners, which were accumulating at an alarming rate. Two Acts of Parliament were of particular concern. Lord Campbell’s Act of 1846 gave dependants of persons who lost their lives through improper navigation the right to sue the shipowner for damages, and The Harbour Docks and Piers Clauses Act of 1847 gave harbour authorities the right to recover damage done to installations.

Neither of these liabilities was covered by underwriters, nor were they covered by the terms of the hull club policy. And so, true to form, John Bagwell Holman decided to fill the gap with his own creation – The Shipowners’ Protection Association – which he formed in 1855 under the management of John Holman & Sons, comprising John Holman, Thomas Holman and John Holman the younger.

he Britannia Club was also formed in 1855 by Tindall Riley. The Britannia was the first club to trade and therefore, can justly claim to be the first ‘protection club’ in the world. What is not clear is whether the ideas were conceived on parallel lines, with each club developing its cover without the knowledge of the other.

The first Committee of the newly formed Shipowners’ Protection Association was made up entirely of shipowners from England’s West Country:

Thomas Restarick of Devonport
William Symons of Topsham
Charles Webber Bricknell of Exmouth
John Burford of Exmouth
Samuel Hastings of Teignmouth
Thomas Hutchings of Exeter
William Mear of Exeter
Peter Palmer of Exeter
Gilbert Periam of Topsham

ssuming that the Committee was drawn only from owners living within a radius of a few miles of Exeter, the entire membership was also drawn from that area, emphasising the parochial nature of the business. It is known that, apart from being one of the Managers, John Holman was also a member – with six vessels, as was his uncle Gilbert Periam, who also served on the Committee. Intriguingly, another shipowner who appears in the list of the founder members of The Shipowners’ Protection Association is John Plimsoll, believed to be related to the famous campaigner for crew safety Samuel Plimsoll, who lived in Bristol during the same period.

One can also assume that there was at least one woman member as the ‘Agreement’, which was the first policy or set of rules, refers to ‘himself and herself’ and ‘his and hers’. The records show that the Association started with 221 ships with a total tonnage of 58,228. (The word Association was used in those days to describe a ‘protection mutual’. The word ‘club’ in those times was in reference to the hull clubs and it was not until as late as the 1960s that the word was used outside the industry to denote the P&I mutuals).

The first decade of the Association’s existence was a period of expansion, with vessels joining from much further afield than Devon. Small coastal craft were entered alongside seagoing windjammers, and Thames and Medway sailing barges. This was a time of rapid change in the shipping industry and steamships were now very much in evidence.

In 1866, following a judgement where a shipowner was held liable for the loss of cargo carried on board his vessel, the Association changed its rules to include cover of liabilities for loss and damage to cargo so that the member could be indemnified for his loss. In this way, the word ‘indemnity’ was added to the company’s title, and the acronym ‘P&I’ was added to the maritime lexicon.

ail gave way to steam, and as the membership in this category grew, it became obvious that the demands made on the Association by steamship owners were different from those made by owners of traditional craft. Although the shipping community was divided about the long-term viability of steam, John Holman & Sons characteristically decided that the future was in steam and in 1870 decided to launch The West of England Steamship Owners Protection & Indemnity Association Ltd. This was another mutual but, as its name suggests, one dedicated entirely to the insurance of third party liabilities for vessels powered by steam.

In 1873 John Holman & Sons moved both the Shipowners’ and West of England Clubs, together with the management, to Lime Street in the City of London, which was then the hub of world shipping. Communications were primitive at that time and close proximity to brokers, Lloyd’s underwriters and all the paraphernalia of the shipping and insurance markets was crucial to the success of an expanding company.

The move to London was clearly beneficial for all parts of the Holman group, and The Shipowners’ Protection & Indemnity Association Ltd – referred to by many as ‘SOP’ – shared in the success, adding many east coast fishing vessels, as well as sailing barges and small coastal craft. Such was the success of P&I at this time that the normally austere managers found the time and money to take the staff for an outing to Highrocks, Tunbridge Wells in April 1899. By 1900, SOP boasted 500 Members, some of whom were, for the first time in the Club’s history, from the continent of Europe.

The period between the turn of the century and the Great War saw new designs of steamships trading alongside the sailing ships whose technology went back hundreds of years. It was in 1908 that the Members’ Committee decided to stop accepting windjammers and handed the surviving big ships to The Sailing Ship Mutual Insurance Association Limited managed by Alfred Stocken who were to become managers of the Steamship Mutual P&I Club which they founded in 1911.

ith the outbreak of the 1914-1918 war, many of the members’ vessels were requisitioned by the Royal Navy and the role of the Club was reduced to a conduit for Government instructions to Club members. Like many organisations of the time, SOP lost many of its staff in the war and rebuilding the expertise of the management was an uphill task made more difficult by the depression following the Wall Street crash of 1929. The recovery was only just beginning when the Second World War started, once again throwing members and Club alike into further disarray. Small coastal vessels like those entered in SOP played an important part in the war effort, some of them taking part in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.

uring the 1939-1945 war, the day-to-day affairs of the clubs under the management of Holmans were dealt with by a very small team of people who, by necessity, had to be able to turn their hand to anything to do with P&I. The stalwarts running the Club were, in the main, people who were too old to be called up or who were disabled – often due to service in the 1914-1918 war. One such man was Charlie Hollocks, who joined Holmans as a boy in 1913, volunteered for the army two years later and saw action in several major battles. In one of the last decisive battles of the war he won the Military Medal for carrying a wounded comrade over a minefield whilst under fire. In the course of this heroic rescue he sustained severe injuries including the loss of sight in one eye. Mr Hollocks took over the running of SOP towards the end of the war and was appointed Company Secretary on 9 October 1946, a post he held until his retirement in 1963.

At the end of the war, shipping – like the rest of Britain – was in a parlous state, and the huge task of rebuilding both fleets and the infrastructure began once again. John Holman & Sons set about rebuilding their business with the emphasis on the steamship club, which was clearly going to be the area of expansion. Although the membership of the SOP was depleted, the Club was still a major player in covering small craft including coasters, fishing vessels and even sailing barges, which were still in evidence. Indeed, the Thames Sailing Barge Match in 1953 featured a number of barges entered in SOP which participated as part of the celebrations to mark the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. This continued a tradition of sailing barge racing which began in 1863 and has at times featured strong rivalry between fellow members of the Club. The longest continuous entry in the Club was SB ‘Cabby’ from 1928 to 2003. A watercolour painting of her was commissioned in 1988 to mark her 60th anniversary, prints of which hang in many offices around the world. The Club still sponsors the Thames Sailing Barge Match to this day.

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