Lord Selkirk’s agents having meanwhile discovered that a plot was hatching at M‘Gillivray’s house in Montreal—and the nucleus of the North-West Company—to upset altogether the infant settlement at Red River, Mr Beauchamp volunteered to set off at once and convey the first intelligence of this Guy Fawkes business to the poor unsuspecting colonists. To this end, he started for Moose Factory, in James Bay, in an Indian canoe. When about midway, he was overtaken by the rigours of a Canadian winter, with all its impediments to continued and safe travel. He had to walk to the above-named Factory, and thence along the coast of Hudson’s Bay to Albury, Severn, and York factories, and on to Red River—a journey of two thousand miles, a feat which only a nature inured to privation and hardship such as we have described, together with the substratum of an iron constitution, could possibly have performed.
On the night of Mr Beauchamp’s arrival at his destination, there happened to be some kind of bacchanalian revelries going on in true military style, got up by the commandant at Fort Douglas, Red River. In these our adventurer took part, but in a way that did not greatly redound to his credit. Nothing, it may be presumed, was known there of his antecedents, and as he was heart and soul devoted to Red River, he was advised to find a wife amongst the native women of Caledonia residing on the spot. The choice was soon made of a widow, and in the absence of any clergyman, the knot was tied by the civil magistrate. Shortly after, his pecuniary affairs being now in a satisfactory condition, he resolved to return to England. Whilst there, a longing came over him to see once more the love of his youth and to ask her forgiveness for the past and the boon of her friendship in his declining years. More than thirty years had elapsed since they parted, but the lady had never married. After the death of her parents, she had come into possession of a fortune, and had a handsome establishment in Portman Square. There she resided for the rest of her life, and there, too, she saw again the friend of her youth, and received his explanation. What that explanation was, never passed her lips. We may be sure that no man of birth, fortune, and social position would have sacrificed all for a trifle, and become to all intents and purposes an outlaw.
It was during this sojourn in England that he formed the plan of a ‘Buffalo Wool Company,’ making himself the managing partner. It turned out a miniature South Sea Bubble, for it left Mr Beauchamp minus six thousand pounds. He had returned to Canada in 1820, and an occasional interchange of letters with Miss Middleton followed. In his perfect diction and finished phrases there was still much to remind her of the fascinating polished friend of her youth, from whose pen she had received an unvarnished account of his strange career. In testimony of this, a touching record was found amongst her papers at her decease, which took place some years after that of Mr Beauchamp. When the news reached him in 1826 of the failure of his last venture, the shock it gave him reduced his fine athletic form in a few weeks to a shadow. He was first attacked by delirium, and then fell into a state of absolute despondency. But his mental faculties completely recovered their power; and just at the most critical period of his illness, he was received and cared for by the English chaplain and his wife. When sufficiently restored, he sought some new means of employment which involved neither risk nor outlay. His last occupation was the mastership of a private boarding-school for the families of the Company’s officers at the Red River. In this way he managed to support himself and his family until his death. He used to speak of himself to the clergyman’s wife as ‘a humble sprig of nobility,’ and had ingeniously drawn out a genealogical tree—still in the possession of this lady’s family—tracing his descent from Richard Cœur-de-Lion.
A1 AT LLOYD’S.
A1 at Lloyd’s is a sufficiently familiar expression; it meets our eye in the newspaper paragraph; it stares at us from the wall-placard; and it haunts us in Fenchurch Street, E.C., Water Street, Liverpool, and other chosen homes of shipowners. Every one recognises in it a nautical equivalent for ‘first quality;’ but here information on the subject usually ends. As Lloyd’s Register of British and Foreign Shipping, the institution granting the title in question, has not long since celebrated its jubilee, we believe a short account of the origin of that undertaking and of the work in which it is engaged may prove of interest.
The business of underwriting or insuring against marine risks is of very ancient date; to say that it existed among the Phœnicians takes us back a long way in the world’s history; and as a necessary preliminary to legitimate underwriting, as distinguished from mere chance-work, lies, and must ever have lain, in knowing that the vessel proposed to be insured is seaworthy, we may also claim for the business of the ship-surveyor a respectable antiquity.
The primitive underwriter was probably a man with a practical knowledge of ships, and who, when asked to insure a certain vessel, surveyed it himself. As business increased, however the inconvenience attending this system would soon make itself felt, and the obvious expedient of the underwriter employing a skilled man to make the survey for him and send in a report, would be adopted. From an underwriter receiving reports of the condition of individual ships, to his arranging these in tabular form, is but a step; and from individual underwriters drawing up such lists for their own guidance, to their agreeing generally to place them at the service of their brothers in the business, is but another, although the length of time that elapsed ere this latter result was reached was doubtless considerable. The oldest classified list of shipping extant dates only from the beginning of the reign of George III.; but this document—of which more anon—bears unmistakable internal evidence of being at the time no novelty.
Our story opens during the early years of the reign of Charles II.; English colonies across the sea were beginning to prosper; English commerce, notwithstanding oppressive fiscal laws, was on the increase, and the business of the underwriter naturally followed. London was then, as now, the headquarters of the marine insurance business of the country; and the city coffee-houses, then but of recent origin, were the common meeting-places of all connected with the shipping interest: it is the name of the proprietor of one of these establishments that now lives in that of the great corporation of Lloyd’s.
Edward Lloyd is one of those men of whom we would gladly know more than history has brought down to us, but of whose personality apart from his work we know practically nothing, even his proper name having been lost, until recovered by the researches of a recent writer. Finding his house in Tower Street regularly frequented by underwriters, Lloyd—who must have been a man of great ability and foresight—appears to have formed the resolution of making it the headquarters of the business; and to this end, gave facilities for meetings, arranged for sales of vessels and cargoes, started a newspaper, and practically identified his interests with those of his patrons. The newspaper was short-lived, being suppressed by government; but his labours were rewarded by his seeing his establishment—latterly removed to Lombard Street—the centre of marine insurance business not only for London but for the kingdom. Three generations of underwriters met at the Lombard Street coffee-house, and when, in 1770, having formed an association, they removed to premises of their own, and shortly after to the Royal Exchange, they took the name of their old headquarters with them; and thus it has come about that the greatest marine insurance corporation the world has seen owes its name, and to a certain extent its origin, to a London coffee-house keeper at the time of the Restoration, to whose memory the foreign shipowning Companies’ titles of ‘Austrian Lloyd’s,’ ‘North German Lloyd’s,’ ‘Argentine Lloyd’s,’ &c. are additional tributes. The classified list of shipping already referred to as the oldest extant is dated 1764, but is, unfortunately, somewhat mutilated. The work is arranged in a form very similar to that of the register books of to-day, giving in parallel columns the name of the vessel, tonnage, date of building, owner, &c.; and also what is evidently intended for a character or class, one or other of the vowels A, E, &c., in conjunction with the letters G, M, or B. The key to this system of classification is missing; but Mr Martin, the historian of Lloyd’s, has surmised, with every appearance of justice, that the vowels refer to the character of the hull of the vessel; and the accompanying letters, being the initials of the words good, middling, and bad, to the character of the equipment; AG being thus a good, well-equipped ship, and UB the reverse.
How to express satisfactorily the condition of a ship by means of symbols was evidently about this time a disputed point, as in a register dated four years later an entirely new system appears, the letters a, b, c being used in conjunction with the Roman numerals 1, 2, 3, 4. Under this system, a1, an approximation to the now familiar character, represented a good vessel; and c4 its antithesis. Seven years later still, in 1775, the vowels again make their appearance for expressing the character of the hull, the Roman numerals being retained, and A1, as the symbol for a first-class ship, comes on the scene. To decide what shall be the classification letters or numerals used in describing ships of varying character is one thing; to give to each ship the class to which it is justly entitled is another and decidedly more difficult matter. So the London underwriters found; but instead of treating the question as one in which many interests were involved, they treated it as concerning themselves alone, and, during the closing years of last century, came to a decision the sole merit of which was its simplicity. The London shipbuilders of the day got a better price for their work than the builders at other ports, and consequently were able to, and admittedly did, turn out a better ship. Further, it might be primâ facie supposed that a ship, built even on the Thames, was not so good after being afloat ten years as on the day of its launch. Putting these two things together, the compilers of the Register decided to class ships simply according to their age and where they were built; such events as a ship newly built on the Tees being occasionally better than a Thames-built craft of the same size that had been knocking about the seas for five years; or a thirteen-year-old ship under good management being actually in better repair and more seaworthy than an eight-year-old one in careless hands, being held to be contingencies needless to provide against. It was hardly to be supposed that the shipowners would agree to a system of classification which practically placed a monopoly in the hands of certain builders, and which decreed that existing ships after a certain period would lose their class, no matter how perfect their state of repair; and the result of indignation meetings on the subject was the starting of a new Register of shipping; thereafter known as the ‘Red Book;’ the former, or underwriters’ register, being known as the ‘Green Book.’ From the date of founding of the Red Book, the history of ship-classification, from being fragmentary, becomes continuous; and, had the popular saying, that competition is the life of trade, been of universal application, great advance might have been looked for; the law of supply and demand, however, stopped the way. There was not sufficient work for the two Registers; each found it difficult to meet its expenses without taxing its supporters; and although, during the thirty odd years the rivalry lasted, some advance was made, still, during the whole of that period the relationships of shipbuilders, shipowners, shippers, and underwriters one to the other were on an unsatisfactory footing. Nowadays, it is recognised—and no one thinks of disputing the justice of the arrangement—that the shipowner, being clearly the person most interested in his ship bearing a high class, should pay the expense of all surveys. This apparently elementary truth was, however, far from being recognised sixty years ago, the opinion then being that the interested parties were the shippers and underwriters.