Arthur Anderson
(1792 - 1868)
           
           
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Arthur Anderson (1792 - 1868)
Co-Founder of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O)

Arthur Anderson (1792 - 1868), was a Scottish businessman and Liberal politician. He was co-founder of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O).

He was born at Grimista, in  Lerwick (Shetland), and as a boy worked on the beach preparing fish. By 1808 he joined the Royal Navy and was discharged 10 years later in London. Anderson eventually became a clerk in the London shipping brokerage firm of Brodie McGhie Wilcox where he become a partner in 1822. They developed the shipping business between Britain and the Iberian peninsular, at one stage shipping guns and the British Legion to fight Portuguese conservatives and Spanish Carlists during their internal wars of the 1830s.

They followed this with a regular steamship service in 1837, called the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, which soon became P&O. Despite cash crises, it expanded operations to Hong Kong and Australia, supported by government mail contracts. At his death in 1868 P&O had the largest commercial fleet of steamships in the world.
He moved to Streatham, London, and was Chairman of P&O from 1854 until his death; other chairs included the coal transport company the Union Steam Ship Co. and the Crystal Palace Co. He served as a radical Liberal MP in Westminster for the Orkney & Shetland constituency.

He also founded the Shetland Journal newspaper, the Shetland Fishery Company at Vaila, and encouraged fish exports to Spain and business between Shetland and the UK mainland. He endowed Lower Norwood Working Men's Institute, the Anderson Educational Institute (later and currently known as Anderson High School) and a home for the widows of fishermen in Shetland. He died in 1868 and was buried at West Norwood Cemetery in London.

Related Websites:

Shetland Museum (The Bod of Gremista - Birthplace of Arthur Anderson)
www.shetland-museum.org.uk/bod/anderson.htm

Carnival Corporation & PLC
www.carnivalplc.com

P&O Group
www.pogroup.com

P&O Cruises
www.pocruises.com
   






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