A Liverpool Exemplar - John Samuel Swire

John Samuel Swire was born on the 24th of December 1825 in Liverpool. His father, John Swire, born in 1793, was a Liverpool merchant who founded an import-export business in Liverpool, trading in textiles, in about 1816 and was the founder of the Swire Group. His mother was Maria Louisa Roose and the family lived at 33 Hope Street, Liverpool. He had a younger brother, William Hudson Swire, born in 1830 and following their father's death in 1847 both sons took charge of the family business. John Samuel Swire, a formidable man with an adventurous streak who lived for business, was already an accomplished business man who, in his 20s travelled widely throughout the Unites States for five months. He then set sail for Australia in 1854 aboard the White Star Clipper 'Spray of the Ocean' to reportedly prospect for gold, as Victoria was at the centre of a gold rush in the 1850s, and to search for new business opportunities. This culminated in the opening of a branch office in Melbourne in 1855 of Swire Bros establishing a growing export trade to Australia of all manner of goods but in 1858 returned to England where his younger brother was having difficulty managing without him.

He married twice, first Helen on the 15th of November 1859, the daughter of a prosperous Liverpool sugar refiner Adam Fairrie. Helen died at sea in 1862 aboard the ship Palestine, off the coast of Turkey whilst on holiday, leaving a son John. John Samuel reacted to his wife’s death by retreating into his business with increased energy, importing cotton from America and exporting British goods to Australia. Following the disruption to the cotton industry brought about by the American Civil War, he travelled to Shanghai in November 1866 to investigate the China market. He believed in networking and one of his closest and most successful colaborations was in 1865 with Alfred Holt, the Liverpool founder of the Blue Funnel Line. An opportunity to expand the market in China arose and, as an old friend of John Samuel Swire, Alfred Holt made a business proposal. Holt had designed a new type of steam ship, it would be fast but low on fuel consumption and with these new steamers he intended to dominate the Liverpool-Far East fast service. Holt wanted Swire to invest in Holts shipping line and in return Holt would make Swire his China agent if he set up his own office in Shanghai. John saw this as a great opportunity and in 1866 they formed a partnership with R.S. Butterfield a Yorkshire textile manufacturer.Through this association, Butterfield & Swire strengthened its own shipping activities with its China Navigation Company, formed in 1872, becoming the largest shipping operator on the Yangtze River. One of John's first achievements in Shanghai had been the acquisition of the China agency for the Ocean Steamship Company and the fact that Holts appointed Butterfield & Swire as agents rather than one of the established Chinese Hongs was a measure of John’s standing in shipping circles at the time. At the age of forty he had already established a reputation as a man of unquestionable integrity and was the initiative behind the 'shipping conferences' that were established in the 1870s to regulate competition among shipowners and operators as he believed that there was enough of a market for all to have a fair share of it.  

Having moved his main office from Liverpool to London in 1870, in October 1881 he married Boston-born Mary Warren, the daughter of a Liverpool shipowner, with whom he had another son, George Warren. In 1884 he bought Leighton House in Bedfordshire, a residence suited to his successful status. Here, known as 'The Senior', John was now master of a large household, including 12 servants, two of whom were full-time nurses since he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis in his later years. Until his death, in his London residence, of heart failure in 1898, he had never once relinquished control of his business empire.

Plaque at 33 Hope Street, Liverpool.

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/01/a-liverpool-exemplar-nikki-holland.html