Antony Gibbs & Sons

From its foundation until its listing on the London Stock Exchange in 1973, the company was formed and operated as a partnership in which the extended Gibbs family of grandfather Dr. George Abraham Gibbs all had a share.[1][2] Secondly, as was usual with Victorian families, they 'did business' with each other and various members of the extended family who were associated in numerous ways.[1][2]

In 1846, the captain of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Britain ran the ship hard aground in Dundrum Bay on the northeast coast of Ireland.[6] After being floated free a year later in August 1847 at a cost of £34,000, she was taken back to Liverpool and languished there for a year before being sold to Gibbs, Bright & Co. for £25,000, who had been her shipping agents when she had been based from Bristol.

Great Britain in 1853, after her refit to four masts

Instead of just recommissioning her, the firm agreed to a complete refit, that:

• Completely renewed a 150-foot (46 m) length of the keel
• Strengthen the hull, bow and stern
• Replaced the engines with a pair of smaller, lighter and more modern oscillating engines, with 82+1⁄2-inch (210 cm) cylinders and 6-foot (180 cm) stroke, built by John Penn & Sons of Greenwich
• Replaced the chain-drive with a proven cog-wheel arrangement
• Replaced the original three large boilers with six new smaller ones, operating at 10 psi (69 kPa). This allowed the ship's cargo capacity to be almost doubled, from 1,200 to 2,200 tons.[7]
• Added a new 300-foot (91 m) cabin on the main deck
• Replaced the four-bladed propeller with a three-bladed model

In this guise she undertook one more trip to New York under the flag of Gibbs, Bright & Co., before they sold her to Antony Gibbs & Sons. Gibbs, Bright & Co. remained the ship's agents and operators, and under instruction employed Great Britain to exploit a temporary demand for passenger service to the Australian gold fields following the discovery of gold in Australia in 1851.[8] In 1852, Great Britain made her first voyage to Melbourne, carrying 630 emigrants. She excited great interest there, with 4,000 people paying a shilling each to inspect her. On her return to Liverpool, she was given a third refit:

• Passenger accommodations were increased from 360 to 730
• Sail plan altered to a traditional three-masted, square-rigged pattern
• Fitted with a removable propeller, which could be hauled up onto deck by means of chains to reduce drag when the vessel was operating under sail power alone

From 1854, Robert's son Charles Edward Bright became the firm's representative in Australia, and later partner in the firm. Great Britain continued to operate on the England–Australia route for almost thirty years, interrupted only by two relatively brief sojourns as a troopship—first during the Crimean War and later during the Indian Mutiny. Gradually, she came to earn a reputation for herself as the most reliable of the emigrant ships to Australia.

In 1882 the Great Britain was converted into a sailing ship to transport bulk coal, but after a fire on board in 1886 she was found on arrival at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands to be damaged beyond repair. She was sold to the Falkland Islands Company and used, afloat, as a storage hulk (coal bunker) until 1937, when she was towed to Sparrow Cove, 3.5 miles from Port Stanley, scuttled and abandoned.

Henry Hucks Gibbs drove the business more towards Merchant banking, so successfully that the firm financed the construction of the Great Western Railway, and Brunel's SS Great Eastern, a ship that they also insured via the developing insurance brokerage business.[1]

From 1853 to 1901, Henry Hucks Gibbs was a Director of the Bank of England, and its Governor from 1875 to 1877. In the late 1880s, Barings Bank daring efforts in underwriting got the firm into serious trouble through overexposure to Argentine and Uruguayan debt. In 1890, Argentine president Miguel Juárez Celman was forced to resign following the Revolución del Parque, and the country was close to defaulting on its debt payments. This crisis finally exposed the vulnerability of Barings position. Lacking sufficient reserves to support the Argentine bonds until they got their house in order, the bank had to be rescued by a consortium organised by the then governor of the Bank of England, William Lidderdale, with the commercial consortia headed by Henry Hucks Gibbs and the family firm.[1] The resulting turmoil in financial markets became known as the Panic of 1890.

Right elevation and deck plan as depicted in Brassey's Naval Annual 1915

HMS Triumph as completed January 1904

In late 1901, Chile and Argentina were on the brink of war, and Chile was concerned about its navy's ability to counter the armoured cruisers Rivadavia and Moreno, which Argentina had ordered from Italy earlier that year. Sir Edward Reed, chief designer for Armstrong Whitworth, was in Chile for health reasons at the time, and met with Chilean Navy officials to discuss the idea of purchasing or building two battleships with high speed and a powerful armament on a low displacement. Purchase of existing ships was not a practical option, so the Chileans asked Reed to design the ships for construction in the UK. Chile ordered the ships in 1901: Constitución from Armstrong Whitworth at Elswick; Libertad from Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness.[9]

Considered second-class battleships, Chile had required the ships to fit into the graving dock at Talcahuano, so they had to be longer and narrower for their displacement than ships built to British standards. Details in mast and anchor arrangements as well as the arrangement of magazines and shell-handling rooms also were different from British standards.[10]

As part of the Pacts of May, which ended the near-war tensions between Argentina and Chile, Argentina sold its two armoured cruisers that were under construction in Italy to Japan. As a result, in 1903 Chile also put its battleships up for sale. While the United Kingdom was not entirely interested in the ships, international politics took precedence: when the Russian Empire made an offer for the ships, the British grew concerned that the ships could be used against their new ally Japan. By now Antony Gibbs & Sons was run by the partnership of Members of Parliament (MP's) Alban Gibbs and his younger brother Vicary Gibbs.[11] After representation to the Admiralty and Antony Gibbs & Sons jointly by a delegation of Argentine, Chilean and Japanese diplomats, the brothers offered to finance the Admiralty's purchase of the ships by companies merchant banking arm. As a result, the Admiralty purchased both Chilean battleships on 3 December 1903 for £2,432,000.[12][13]

However, under an old law which debarred MPs from accepting contracts from the Crown, the transaction triggered two by-elections, in which Alban was re-elected unopposed,[14] but Vicary lost his seat.[15] Both ships were subsequently modified for service with the Royal Navy, with Constitución entering service in June 1904 as HMS Swiftsure, and Libertad soon afterwards as HMS Triumph.[16]