His father, Samuel Enderby (1717–1797), founded the firm named after him in 1775, when he assembled a fleet of whaling vessels on the Greenwich Peninsula, on the south bank of the Thames just downstream of the City of London.
He was in partnership with a man named Buxton at St Paul's Wharf,[2] i.e. near the cathedral of the City of London.
The younger Samuel Enderby was baptised, as recorded in the protestant Dissenters Registry, on 4 June 1755.
In 1800, with his partner Alexander Champion, Enderby successfully petitioned that his whalers should be allowed to take provisions for the New South Wales colony to compete with American merchants.
[2] The younger Samuel Enderby married Mary Goodwyn, sister of his brother's wife Elizabeth, on 2 April 1787 at St Botolph's Aldgate in the City of London.