Eagle Oil and Shipping Company
Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray founded it as the Eagle Oil Transport Company in 1912 and sold it to Royal Dutch Shell in 1919.
(ennobled as Viscount Cowdray in 1910) headed a successful civil engineering contractor, S. Pearson and Sons, that had contracts in Mexico from 1889.
On 3 August 1914 San Wilfrido struck a mine and sank off Cuxhaven in the North Sea, making her the first merchant ship sunk in the First World War.
[9] In December 1917 the German submarine SM U-19 torpedoed and sank Santa Amalia in the North Atlantic to the west of Islay, with the loss of 43 officers and crew.
Eagle Oil Transport had at least one motor tanker by the end of the War; San Dario (1,137 tons), which had been launched in 1918 by Short Brothers of Sunderland.
San Casimiro was captured off Cape Race, Newfoundland by the German battleship Gneisenau on 15 March 1941 and scuttled off the Azores five days later.
[17] San Demetrio (8,073 tons), which Blythswood had launched at Port Glasgow in 1938, became famous for surviving a naval bombardment by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer in 1940.
San Demetrio's crew succeeded in extinguishing the resultant fire and bringing the ship and her cargo of aviation spirit to Glasgow, Scotland.
San Demetrio was repaired and returned to service, but the German submarine U-404 torpedoed and sank her in the western Atlantic off Virginia on 17 March 1942 with the loss of 19 lives.
[20] On 9 April 1942 U-203 torpedoed and sank San Delfino (8,072 tons) in the North Atlantic off Cape Hatteras, USA with the loss of 28 lives.
In April 1958 a Douglas B-26 Invader bomber aircraft, painted black and with no markings,[27] bombed and sank San Flaviano in Balikpapan Harbour, Borneo, killing two of her crew.
[26][28][29][30] The aircraft, its bombs and its pilot, William H. Beale, were sent by the CIA as part of US covert support for the Permesta rebellion in North Sulawesi.
[31] UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd supported the US policy to supply Permesta[32] and on 6 May 1958, more than a week after the CIA sank San Flaviano, Lloyd secretly told US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that this was still his position.
[34][35] Nevertheless, in June 1958 both Indonesia and the UK publicly claimed that the aircraft had been flown by Indonesian rebels,[29] concealing the CIA involvement of which both governments were well aware.
[28] In this they were at least partly successful: Royal Dutch Shell suspended its tanker service to Balikpapan and evacuated shore-based wives and families to Singapore.
By then Royal Dutch Shell had absorbed Eagle Oil and Shipping, which ceased to be a separate member of the group in 1959.
Completed by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd., Newcastle in December 1912 Torpedoed off Stornoway but it was quickly towed in and repaired for service on 10 March 1917 Arrived at Port Glasgow to be scrapped by Smith & Houston Ltd in 1934.
Sank in the Straits of Magellan on 29 July 1927 after striking a rock off of Carlos Island while on passage from Buenos Aires to San Pedro.
