This film is one of many promoting businesses in Yorkshire held with the YFA. Some promote businesses in an area, like Harrogate: Boardroom Of The North, made about the same time as this film; others promote a specific company, as this one does, such as Wimsol Bleach Factory (1951). The company was struggling at this time, hence the film.  Unfortunately little is known of the filmmaker, Jack Gibson, a member of the now defunct Hull Cine Club, other than he made other local films of a...

This film is one of many promoting businesses in Yorkshire held with the YFA. Some promote businesses in an area, like Harrogate: Boardroom Of The North, made about the same time as this film; others promote a specific company, as this one does, such as Wimsol Bleach Factory (1951). The company was struggling at this time, hence the film.  Unfortunately little is known of the filmmaker, Jack Gibson, a member of the now defunct Hull Cine Club, other than he made other local films of a professional sort, including Seaway to Europe.

The Ellerman Wilson Line was at one time one of the largest shipping groups in the world. It was essentially a merger of two great shipping companies, the Wilson Line and the Ellerman Group which came together in 1916. Both of these had undergone various changes, either selling of parts or merging with others. The former started out in 1822 in Hull as Beckinton, Wilson & Co. importing iron ore from Sweden with a fleet of sailing ships, before introducing an irregular sailing ship passenger service between Hull, Hamburg and Rotterdam, in 1835, and a steamship service between Hull and Dunkirk in the same year. They formed a specific Wilsons and North Eastern Railway Shipping Company in 1906 to operate services from Humber ports to Hamburg, Antwerp, Ghent and Dunkirk.

The founder of the Ellerman Lines, John Reeves Ellerman – becoming a ‘Sir’ in 1905 for providing ships for the Boer War – started his business empire in 1886 in the City of London, at the age of 24, having inherited £14,000 from his maternal grandfather.  He was born on 15th May 1862 on Anlaby Road, in Hull, but educated in Bormingham.  He bought businesses that had an established product but were floundering, as in brewering.  He bought the Leyland Line in1892 with a consortium that he soon sold to JP Morgan in 1901 for a sizeable profit.  he started up the Ellerman Lines in 1902.  Although he was into other business areas, such as brewing, it was in shipping that he made his fortune. He later bought up the shipping Company of Thomas Wilson Sons and Company, once the largest privately owned shipping company in the world, in 1916 for £4.1 million. By the following year his fleet was the size of the entire French mercantile marine. The reasons why Thomas Wilson Sons ended up selling to Ellerman are charted by Brian Dyson (see References).

Like any sensible successful businessman he later spread out into more areas, including buying up half of Fleet Street’s newspapers, thus minimising any losses in any one. The so-called ‘risks’ taken by entrepreneurs can significantly diminish once a certain threshold of wealth is achieved. By 1929 he was worth twice as much as the next richest man in the country, and it has been claimed that he, “was the wealthiest businessman ever to live in Britain.” This may have some irony given that Hull has recently been estimated in terms of average income, as the poorest city in Britain (See References).   

His son, confusingly also Sir John Reeves Ellerman, who took over the shipping business, died just after this film was made, in 1973, leaving the bulk of his money in a trust fund for distribution to worthy causes. In the 1930’s, along with his sister, hehelped Jews escape Nazi Germany. In fact his father was a German immigrant who settled in Hull in 1847, becoming part of a German community of Lutherans living there (later, during the First World War, very many Germans and their families were deported back no matter how long they had lived here or whether their wives and children were English).  His sister, Annie Winifred Ellerman,became well known in her own right. Moving to Paris she adopted the pen name Bryher and had a successful career as a novelist and writer, including being an early champion of Russian cinema. 

Shortly after this film was made all Wilson Line services, and other Ellerman companies, were submerged into Ellerman City Liners, except the North Sea services of Wilson Line which were retained separately as Ellerman Wilson Line. However, despite the efforts that this film was obviously a part of, by 1978 competition and decreased trade caused Wilson Line to sell their remaining ships.  As with so many companies the subsequent history has been a convoluted one of one company becoming part of another. In 1983 the Ellerman Group was sold to the Barclay brothers after making heavy losses, and two years later the Ellerman Group's shipping division ‘Ellerman Lines’ was sold to its management, only for this to be taken over by Cunard to become Cunard-Ellerman in another two years.

This decline is hardly surprising given the growth in so many alternative forms of holidaying. There are now adventure holidays, eco-friendly holidays, health and well-being holidays, and all sorts of other kinds of specialist holidays, including going into space. Yet ferries remain popular forms of holidaying, allowing as they do families to take their car. But perhaps more surprising is the growth in cruising: at time of writing (2010), the latest figures, for 2008, show a massive 14% increase in this in just one year (Issues, References).

The Spero, alas, is no more. It was built in 1966 by Camell Laird, in Birkenhead, starting operating between Hull and Gothenburg, Sweden, until 1972, when it switched to running between Hull and Zeebrugge at the beginning of April. But this only lasted until the following year when it was laid up in January, and eventually sold to the Maritime Company of Lesvos, in Greece, in April 1973. Here it was renamed to Saffo, then Sappho.  It was presumably in order to promote this brief service to Zeebrugge – it seems without sufficient success – that the film was made.  In Greece it operated between Leos and Piraeus until 2002.  From then it began a service between Kenya and Tanzania before, after being re-christened Santori, eventually being sold to an Indian company in Upphuggare, in Alang, India – a scrapyard for ships.  

(With thanks to Robin Diaper, Hull Maritime Museum)


References

John Clarkson and Roy Fenton, Ellerman Lines, J & M Clarkson, 1993.

Brian Dyson, ‘The End of the Line: Oswald Sanderson, Sir John Ellerman and the Wilsons of Hull’ in David J. Starkey and Alan G. Jamieson (eds) Exploiting the Sea, Exeter University Press, 1998.

Lisa Firth (editor), Issues: Travel and Tourism, Vol. 156, Independence, Cambridge, 2008.
Duncan Haws, Merchant Fleet, Ellerman Lines, 1989.

Robb Robinson, Far Horizons: from Hull to the ends of the Earth, Maritime Historical Studies Centre University of Hull, 2010. 

Sir John Ellerman and the Reeves Family: the Rise of the Richest Man in Britain

History of the Spero

Was this the richest (and most secretive) British tycoon ever? Telegraph 22 May 2006

The 10 richest towns in the UK... and the 10 poorest. Times Online, April 21 2009