One Hundred Years Of Shipping

In Barcelona on 25 November one hundred years ago, four men put their signatures to a document. It was the deed of incorporation of a new company. Its name was Compañía Trasmediterránea, the most famous of Spain's shipping companies and one that was also to become associated with notoriety.

The four directors of the new company were Jose Juan Dómine, Vicente Ferrer Peset, Joaquín María Tintoré and Enrique García Corrons. Each of them already had shipping interests, but Trasmediterránea was to become an altogether grander operation than any of them had been involved with up to that time. And the reason for that lay with a name not on that deed.

In January 1917, the shipping activities of Trasmediterránea started. It had at its disposal 44 ships. A year later, control of the company was to be taken via another shipping operator - Isleña Marítima. The owner of that company was Joan March Ordinas, later to be known, among other things, as the last pirate of the Mediterranean.

Santa Margalida-born March was by then a very wealthy man. He had acquired his wealth at a young age. The story of how he came by his wealth has been told many times. And having control of shipping companies was an on the face of it legitimate means of acquiring further illicit wealth - from smuggling. In fact, it had been March who had really created Trasmediterránea in the first place.

Trasmediterránea was of course perfectly legitimate and the business grew rapidly, thanks to it having a virtual monopoly on cargo and passenger transport and on official postal services. Its operations embraced the Balearics, the mainland, north Africa and the Canaries. By 1921, the fleet had increased to seventy ships.

March, who founded the Banca March in 1926, was able to get contracts with a succession of governments, even the Republican government (which was to send him to prison, from which he was able to escape). His contacts were such that Alfonso XIII was a shareholder; the king was apparently given 3,000 shares by March. In recognition of such generosity, Trasmediterránea was awarded the contract for moving troops, supplies and equipment to north Africa during the Rif War of the first half of the 1920s.

Then came Franco and the Civil War. March, Franco's banker, was able to supply ships to the Nationalists. It has been said of the relationship between the shipping company and Franco that Trasmediterránea conducted "peculiar" missions. Among these, after the Civil War had ended, was a collaboration with the Nazis: Trasmediterránea ships would help supply submarines out on the high sea.

March, as is well known, played all sides. While he helped the Nazis, he was also responsible for transporting Jews to safety. They paid, and very handsomely too, to be taken to New York. This was despite Trasmediterránea not having permission to undertake transatlantic voyages. When the FBI took an interest, it was Winston Churchill who intervened. March was his favourite Mallorcan spy.

Joan March died in 1962 - some still believe the road accident to have been suspicious - but his name was to live on with Trasmediterránea. Fifty years ago, the "Juan March" (the Spanish version of his name was used) was launched. The March family still controlled the company, but in January 1978 Trasmediterránea was partially taken over by the Spanish government. It was said that the sale was because the shipping industry was experiencing great difficulty. In fact, Trasmediterránea was on the point of bankruptcy. The government of Adolfo Suárez paid the equivalent of 2.60 euros per share for more than half the shares.

It was to be fully nationalised in 1997 and then privatised five years later, sold to the construction company Acciona for 259 million euros plus the taking-on of over 200 million euros debt.

From "El Balear" To The "Oasis"

One hundred and eighty years ago, in 1834, the first steamship arrived in Palma. Its name was "El Rey Don Jaime", but it was nicknamed "El Balear". For Mallorca, totally reliant on shipping, it marked the dawn of the modern era of maritime transport. It meant speedier connections with the mainland - "El Balear", which operated once a month between Palma and Barcelona, could take just fifteen hours to complete the journey - and so a revolution for merchant and passenger shipping. Before the steamship belched and billowed out of Barcelona and made its way to Palma, a sailing ship doing the same journey could take up to twenty days.

With the arrival of the steamship came a further innovation - a new one, a tourist one. A year after the first steamship came to Mallorca, an announcement was made of a tour of Scotland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands to be made by steamship. Two years after this, the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company was founded. It was to become better known as P&O.

"El Balear" had its origins in a request made by a Joan Reynals to the board of commerce in Barcelona in 1829 to import "a steamship of new invention to Spain". It took until 1834 for "El Balear" to make its maiden voyage. It could carry a maximum of forty passengers - not many therefore - but the speed at which it could travel meant that it could be pressed into serving other regular routes, those to the south of France and to Cadiz. Despite there being these other lines, the venture was not a great success. In the first year of operation the losses amounted to over 7,500 pesetas - a fair old amount then.

In fact, it wasn't to be until the 1880s that steamship companies operating out of Mallorca were to truly to come into their own, and by the following decade there were two principal shipping concerns based in Mallorca. One of these was Isleña Marítima, and it was to play a crucial part in the subsequent development of the island's shipping.

Isleña Marítima was an early diversification into legitimate business by the Santa Margalida-born Joan March, who acquired the company. On 1 January 1917, a new company came into being. It was Trasmediterránea, a shipping company whose history is inextricably linked with Mallorca and with March. But the founding of Trasmediterránea is not as it is often reported. March, through Isleña Marítima, took control of Trasmediterránea the year after it started operation. Of the four original founders, none of them was actually Mallorcan. But once March had control, the company came to be seen as Mallorcan (though it was headquartered on the mainland) and came to have a virtual monopoly for decades, thanks to March's close relations with various politicians, one of whom of course was General Franco.

Though Trasmediterránea more or less ran merchant and passenger shipping, there were other other shipping concerns, and they were ones which, almost one hundred years after that tourist ship had journeyed in the North Atlantic, introduced the cruise ship to Mallorca.

Depending on which opinion you prefer, the role of cruise ships in inter-war tourism in Mallorca has either been totally overlooked or greatly exaggerated. It's true to say that it is often neglected, but it is also true to say that its significance hasn't been overstated. In the twelve months before the outbreak of the Civil War, over 5,000 passengers arrived in Palma on 360 ships. The routes included a direct one with New York, this line having in fact been established some twenty years previously.

And it wasn't only North America which sent cruise passengers. South America did, too. Just after Christmas 1925, the "Conde Verde" arrived in Palma with 450 passengers on board. The newspaper "ABC" carried a short news item about this ship, one that related an incident involving customs officials in Valencia before the ship set sail for Palma. Brushes with customs were a regular source of complaint by cruise passengers in those days. 

One aspect of tourism from those times which has been overlooked was that which involved North Africa. Indeed, the whole relationship between Mallorca and Algeria is one that has been largely forgotten. Packet ships operated between Palma and Algiers, and they brought back Algerian visitors to the island. A shipping route from Marseille via Palma to Algiers was to be mirrored by a seaplane route that Air France ran (bringing French and Algerian tourists to Mallorca) before the Civil War intervened.

But to come back to the cruise ships, when the passengers arrived, they were, thanks to the better roads and new coaches, taken off on their excursions. And where did they go? They were taken to the likes of Valldemossa, the Caves of Drach, Pollensa. The same places to which cruise passengers are now also taken, which just goes to show that not a lot has changed apart from the sheer volume of cruise passengers and the type of ship. In September, the largest cruise ship in the world, the "Oasis Of The Seas", with a passenger capacity of 6,360, will arrive in Palma.