The General Steam Navigation Company (GSN), incorporated in 1824, was London's foremost short sea shipping line for almost 150 years.

The board then carefully placed orders for six new ships: four built by Everden at Deptford on land leased from Brocklebank, and two by Wallis at Blackwall.

[12] Some shareholders were worried by the continued calls for additional funding, and in March 1827 they reacted by attempting to dissolve the company.

In order to limit competition GSN made an agreement with the Margate company, in which Sir Robert Banks had an interest.

[23] In August 1822, the "London and Rotterdam Steam Packet Company" started to operate on the same route and immediately came to an agreement on a schedule with the owners of the Rapid.

In 1826 GSN started to compete by employing the Belfast, which connected to the Rhine steamboats of the Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij (NSM), which was important for tourism.

GSN and the "London and Rotterdam Steam Packet Company" soon entered into an agreement about freight rates and services.

[34] GSN operated wharves in Coldharbour and near London Bridge, with some piers and buildings designed by company architect and surveyor Robert Palmer Browne.

Solid profits allowed it to expand, to build up reserves, and to pay a good annual dividend to the shareholders.

What did set the GSN apart was the sheer size of its operations and its domination of the near Continental and some of the coastal steam shipping.

[33] By 1850 the GSN served seven lines to the near continent, seven ports on the British east coast, and was still strongly placed in the Margate and Ramsgate tourism.

The later North of Europe Steam Packet collapsed in 1858, but another company bought its ships, and continued the Tönning service.

Typical exports that GSN carried to Hamburg were: cotton, tapes, woollens, carpets, silk and beer.

In the 1870s GSN management tried to develop new lines to the near-continent, e.g. to Terneuzen and Ghent, Bordeaux, Groningen, but only a service to Porto seems to have become a more lasting venture.

In 1882 GSN started a service to the Mediterranean, with calls at Genoa, Livorno, Naples, Messina and Palermo.

Furthermore, American and Canadian cattle and frozen meat began to enter the British market in huge quantities.

[64] In the late 1870s the GSN succeeded in maintaining a trading profit of about £100,000 a year, but the recent expansion of the company meant that this was now the minimum to serve dividends, reserves and deprecation.

In 1889 some of these were pressing for a committee of enquiry, and one of them called the management of the General Steam Navigation Company the 'laughing stock of the City'.

It was obvious that the cattle trade would not recover, and that the shipping lines to the near-continent would continue to suffer from direct and indirect competition from the railways.

[71] These attempts were fruitless, and the failure of the shipping line to the West African coast even seriously aggravated the situation.

On the connection to Amsterdam it made a pooling arrangement with the Holland Steamship Company (Hollandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij), in which a Dutch railway had a major stake.

[73] On the Harlingen line, the ships Widgeon and Teal got a cool chamber to transport dairy products.

[74] In the Thames tourism market GSN faced though competition from the Victoria Steamboat Association (VSA) for a while.

In 1898 GSN added a new Eagle of 647 tons and a speed of 17 kn to the fleet serviced Margate and Ramsgate.

[77] In 1902 the work of reducing debt and writing of the fleet to a more realistic book value enabled the board to restructure the company.

New low-profile lines with small ships were started to Hull, Yarmouth, Grimsby, King's Lynn, and Norwich.

It extended GSN's activities into cargo handling and forwarding, and increased involvement in Hull, Grimsby and Yarmouth.

[83] After World War I GSN was a prize worth having for larger operators, because it could be used as feeder service for their deep-water trades.

[86] By the mid 1960s the Thames excursion services were closed down, and the appearance of the container ship and the roll-on/roll-off ferry ended most of GSN's traditional business.

In October 1971 the minority shareholders in GSN were bought out, and its activities became part of P&O's European and Air Transport Division.