BW142
Severn & Canal Carrying, Shipping & Steam Towing Company Limited
Description
Records of the Severn & Canal Carrying, Shipping & Steam Towing Company Limited: advice note 1888, account book 1890-1895, telegram 1905.
Date
1888-1905
Reference code
BW142
Access Status
These records are available immediately for research
Administrative / Biographical history
In 1873, the Severn & Canal Carrying, Shipping & Steam Towing Company Limited was formed by the merger of Danks & Sanders and J Fellows & Company. These two carrying companies had been competing for trade in the Bristol Channel and surrounding area. The merger created a company of "General Carriers by Water between Bristol, Gloucester, Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Cork, Worcester, Hereford, Birmingham, Stourbridge, Wolverhampton and other places in the Midlands and Western Counties and South Wales" (Faulkner, Alan H 'Severn & Canal and Cadburys' (Robert Wilson, 1981) p8).
Joshua Fellows, based at Worcester Wharf, Birmingham, and Joseph Danks, at Stourport, managed the company with the assistance of area agents. Between 1843 and 1876 they had a fleet of ten iron sailing trows and ran narrow boats to the Midlands, towed on the River Severn and the Gloucester & Berkeley Canal by their own tugs. In 1889, Fellows became part of Fellows, Morton & Clayton Limited, which consequently held substantial shares in the Severn & Canal Carrying, Shipping and Steam Towing Company Limited.
In 1890 the Severn company approached the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal Company for financial assistance. The canal company were willing to buy the fleet and hire it back but the Severn company continued to 1906. In 1891, the company's name was shortened to the Severn & Canal Carrying Company Limited.
For more information on the Severn & Canal Carrying, Shipping & Steam Towing Company Limited see Alan H Falkner's 'Severn & Canal and Cadburys' (Robert Wilson, 1981) and Edward Paget-Tomlinson's 'The Illustrated History of Canals & River Navigations'.
System of arrangement
It has not been possible to ascertain any original structure of record-keeping from the small number of records held for this company. The fonds has therefore been arranged in chronological order.
Associated material
[See also BW141 and BW143 for records of the Severn and Canal Carrying Company under different company names]