Lloyd's Register

The 17th century

Both Lloyd's Register and Lloyd’s of London, though not connected, owe their name and foundation to a 17th century coffee house owned by Edward Lloyd. His coffee house, then located at Great Tower Street, was first mentioned in the London Gazette for February 18-21, 1689. Most of the business of the day was done in the sociable atmosphere of the 17th century coffee houses. Lloyd’s coffee house was a favourite haunt of merchants, marine underwriters and others, all connected with shipping. They exchanged information and gossip. Lloyd helped by circulating a printed sheet of all the news he heard.

In 1691, Lloyd moved his coffee house to 16 Lombard Street. When Lloyd died on Sunday, February 15, 1713, ownership of the coffee house passed to his daughter, Handy. She died in 1720 and the Lloyd’s coffee house ceased to be under the ownership of the Lloyd family.

The 18th century

In 1760, the customers of the coffee house formed the Register Society. This was the origin of Lloyd's Register.

The first Register of Ships, printed in 1764 and for use in the years 1764-66, was published in order to give both underwriters and merchants an idea of the condition of the vessels they insured and chartered. The early Register contained details of the vessel’s owner, master, tonnage, date of build, where built and number of guns. The condition of the hull and equipment - the ‘class’ of the vessel - was also included. The condition of the hull was indicated by vowels: A, E, I, O and U. The class of the equipment was indicated by G, M or B which stood for Good, Middling or Bad. An example of the combined class is AG or UB. This system lasted for some years, them G, M and B were replaced with the numbers 1, 2 and 3, the Register for 1775-6 being the first to show the ‘A1’ symbol.

The majority of the members of the Register Society were underwriters. A committee was formed of some 11 members to carry out the affairs of the Society. The men they employed to carry out inspections of the vessels were not necessarily expert in the art of ship surveying. There were no clearly defined standards or rules. It was left to each surveyor to exercise his own judgement with the inevitable result that there were gross inconsistencies between the classes assigned to similar vessels. In time it became the practice to limit the number of years for which a ship could hold the highest class, irrespective of how well she had been maintained. The number of years in a particular class also varied according to where a ship was built. For example, a vessel built on the River Thames could remain in the highest class for longer than a vessel built on the River Clyde. This gradually led to a great deal of rivalry between shipowners and the underwriters, culminating in 1799 with the production of a rival Register by the shipowner’s known as the ‘Red Book’. The underwriter’s Register became known as the ‘Green Book’. Their common names reflecting the colour of the binding of each of their registers.

The 19th century

The rivalry continued for a number of years and brought both parties to the verge of bankruptcy. In 1834, on the recommendation of a Committee of Inquiry that had met eight years earlier, the two registers joined forces to become Lloyd’s Register of British and Foreign Shipping. The Society’s aim was to survey and class British ships and any foreign vessels calling at British ports. By 1914 the Society was regarded as an international organisation and ‘British and Foreign’ was dropped.

With the reconstitution of the Society in 1834, a General Committee was formed specifically to be responsible for the running of the Society and for the Rules regarding ship construction and maintenance. In 1890, the Technical Committee was formed to make recommendations regarding the amendment of existing Rules and the adoption of new ones.

LR’s first surveyor to be appointed overseas was Captain Thomas Menzies, a shipbuilder from Leith, who was posted to Quebec and the St Lawrence River in 1851. It was Menzies who, in 1853, suggested to the Committee the use of @ to indicate a vessel had been built under special survey. This is perceived to be the first use of a quality mark anywhere in the world.

In 1856, Samuel Pretious was sent from the Newcastle-upon-Tyne office to become our first surveyor for Holland and Belgium, thereby opening our first office in Europe. However, he was recalled after three years because there was a lack of reasonably profitable work. However, by 1868 there was enough work in the Netherlands and Belgium to sustain an LR office and we opened our first office in the Netherlands and Europe. Three surveyors were appointed, including Hendrik Pieter Hazewinkel. Hazewinkel was typical of the type of surveyor that LR was appointing at that time. He wrote books on navigation, was a member of the examination board of navigation and, before he was 30 years old, he had passed his examinations to be a ship's master in the foreign trade. He designed a small schooner named Velox.

The opening of this office was followed by the appointment of surveyors to Austria, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Australia. LR’s first surveyor to Asia was appointed in 1869, when Joseph Tucker was sent from London to Shanghai.

Our surveyors were involved in many exciting projects, such as the building of the five-masted barque Preussen at Tecklenburg, Geestemunde, Germany, for Frederick Laeisz, better known as the Flying 'P' Line. She was the largest and fastest sailing vessel in the world. The Selandia built in 1912 by Burmeister & Wain, Copenhagen, was the world's first large ocean-going motorship. She was completed to LR class two years after the first motorship, the tanker Vulcanus, built to LR class for Shell.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, the number of headquarters and outport staff was increasing. In 1890, the Technical Committee was formed under the guidance of Benjamin Martell, chief ship surveyor, 1872-1900. Martell was short of stature and known by the shipbuilders as ‘Benjamin, Our Little Ruler’.
Martell pioneered the first freeboard regulations used in the UK after the Board of Trade decided to adopt his calculations in 1886.

Lloyd's Register’s expansion was such that new premises were needed. Land was acquired at the end of Fenchurch Street from James Dixon, a member of LR’s General Committee and chairman from 1907-09. Thomas Collcutt was commissioned to design a splendid building in the Italian Renaissance style, and the staff moved in on December 16, 1901.

The 20th century

Lloyd's Register continued to expand and World War I saw the move into fields other than marine when it was asked by the French Government to inspect steel which was to be used for armaments. In the 1920s and 1930s LR was requested, because of our experience in the ship construction business, to investigate cases of welding fractures in oil storage tanks in the Middle East. And so from very small beginnings, LR’s industrial work started.

At the same time, ship classification continued apace with the classification of such ships as the first all-welded sea-going ship, the Fullagar in 1920, and later the Stratheden built by Vickers, Barrow in 1937.

From the late 1920s, Lloyd's Register was also asked to take on aircraft inspection and the General Committee appointed an Aviation Committee and aviation surveyors.

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