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P&O Ships
Ventura Maiden Voyage - 18th April 2008 Ventura is due to leave Southampton at 17:00 (BST/GMT +1) today, Friday 18th April on her maiden voyage. A fireworks display will take place to mark the maiden voyage of Ventura. The fireworks display will be conducted from the barge. The display will commence at 20:20 and last for approximately 8 minutes.
The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, (P&O), is a British shipping and logistics company which dates from the early 19th century. Its head office is in London. In March 2006 it was sold to Dubai Ports World for £3.9 billion. HistoryIn 1822 Brodie McGhie Wilcox, a London ship broker, and Arthur Anderson, a Scottish sailor, went into partnership to operate a shipping line, primarily operating routes between England and Spain and Portugal. In 1835 a Dublin shipowner named Captain Richard Bourne joined the business and the three men started a regular steamer service between London and Spain and Portugal - the Iberian Peninsula - using the name Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, with services to Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon and Cádiz. The company flag colours are directly connected with the Peninsular flags: the white and blue represent the Portuguese flag in 1837, and the yellow and red the Spanish flag. In 1837 the business won a contract from the British Admiralty to deliver mail to the Iberian Peninsula and in 1840 they acquired a contract to deliver mail to Alexandria in Egypt. The present company, the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was incorporated in that year by a Royal Charter, and its name therefore includes neither "Plc" nor "Limited". Mail contracts were to be the basis of P&O's prosperity until the Second World War, but the company also became a major commercial shipping line and passenger liner operator. In 1914 it took over the British India Steam Navigation Company, which was then the largest British shipping line, owning 131 steamers. In 1918 it gained a controlling interest in the Orient Line, its partner in the England- Australia mail route. Further acquisitions followed and the fleet reached a peak of almost 500 ships in the mid 1920s. 85 of the company's ships were sunk in the First World War and 179 in the Second World War. Post warAfter 1945 the passenger market declined. P&O entered the cruise market, but it concentrated mainly on cargo ships. It entered the tanker trade in 1959 and the roll-on roll-off (RORO) ferry business in the mid 1960s. It was also a pioneer of container shipping, as a member of a four company consortium that founded Overseas Containers Limited (OCL). By the early 1980s it had converted all of its dry cargo liner routes to container operations and in 1986 it bought out the remaining OCL partners, renaming the operation P&O Containers Limited (P&OCL). P&OCL was merged with Nedlloyd in 1996 to form P&O Nedlloyd. In 1975 P&O established Pandoro for operation of the company's Irish Sea RORO routes. Pandoro was an acronym for P AND O ROro. In 1998 P&O European Ferries (Irish Sea) Ltd was formed by the internal merger of Pandoro Ltd. and P&O European (Felixstowe) Ltd., to run the Irish Sea routes. In 1987 P&O took over the European Ferries Group which traded as Townsend Thoresen and renamed the company P&O European Ferries. Over the last quarter of the Twentieth Century P&O also diversified into construction management (through the Bovis companies, which it owned from 1974 to 1999), property investment and development, and a variety of service businesses including exhibition and conference centres, but most of these activities were disposed of following the company's decision in March 1999 to concentrate on its maritime and transport interests. Its P&O Ports and P&O Cold Logistics divisions both developed from P&O's operations in Australia, where it has a leading position in both of these fields. Fastcraft is the name given to a service implement by shipping company P&O after the split-up of P&O European Ferries in 1998. The first ship was called Superstar Express (entered service in 1998) and sailed alongside the Pride of Cherbourg and Pride of Hampshire to Cherbourg and back. There were decisions to have another one in the next six years. ShipsIn the early 1970s P&O took over British India, Strick Line and Haines Norse, amongst several other lines. The BI ships were renamed Strath*M* (Strathmore Strathmuir, Strathmay etc), the Strick line ships renamed Strath*A* (Strathanna, Strathard, Strathattrick (the big "A") etc) and the Haines Norse ships Strath*T* (Strathtruim, Strathtay etc). The newest ships were the Strath*D*s (Strathduns etc) were SD14s from Newcastle. P&O also purchased 6 ships from Japan (the Strath*e*s referred to above). Demergers On October 23, 2000 P&O demerged its cruise business P&O Princess Cruises plc. In April 2003 P&O Princess came together with the Carnival Corporation to form Carnival Corporation & plc. In June 2004, P&O sold its 25% stake in Royal P&O Nedlloyd, a major container shipping business into which its container operations had been merged in 1996. The container company was later (June 2005) purchased by A.P. Moller-Maersk Group. The operating profit for 2004 was £268.3 million.
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