Bank Line

Andrew Weir, from Glasgow, Scotland, who came from a family of cork merchants, became a ship owner in 1885 when he purchased a barque, already known as the Willowbank.

[2] After World War I, Bank Line ordered 18 oil-fired twin-screw motor vessels from Harland & Wolff in Glasgow and these went into service between 1924 and 1926.

Bank Line also ordered 12 new steamships and motorships from Workman, Clark and Company in Belfast between 1928 and 1934.

[4] The three that didn't were passenger ships that often carried indentured Indian labourers to work on sugar plantations.

Many of the liner services operated through Calcutta, with routes to eastern, southern and western Africa, Argentina and the west coast of South America.

Other routes included the United States Gulf to Australia and New Zealand and the Papua New Guinea and Pacific Islands to Europe service.

Durban was an important centre as the Oriental African Line resumed service after the war and began to visit Japan again and was extended to serve Taiwan, the Philippines, East Malaysia, and Thailand.

[2] Over time the Bank Line began to suffer from the movement towards container shipping and also changes to trading circumstances such as the decline in jute exports through Calcutta, the sale of Papua New Guinea copra to Japan rather than Europe, and the boycott of trading with South Africa by India because of apartheid.

[5] By the second half of the 1970s, the Bank Line's business was centered on the US Gulf, involving liner sailings from ports such as Houston and New Orleans to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the UK and the rest of Europe.

For a time the South Pacific trade was consolidated into the Australian and New Zealand routes but this proved inefficient.