Tod & Macgregor Customers:

Notes:

William Inman, a Leicester man, was only twenty-five years of age when he started the Inman line, officially known as the "Liverpool, New York and Philadelphia Steamship Company", but in a short business career he had already raised himself from the position of junior clerk in the office of Richardson Bros., the sailing packet managers of Liverpool, to be a partner.

He was a veritable human dynamo for energy, and in addition he had the inestimable advantage of being able to appreciate the other person's point of view. This gave him a big advantage in the competition for passenger favour, for until then most of the steamship owners had been content to bring about their improvements on the technical side, leaving potential passengers to appreciate these improvements or to stay away.

Inman, on the other hand, believed that competition was going to be so strong that the favour of the passenger was the most important thing, and in this he luckily had the support of his wife. They were willing to travel as emigrants on more than one occasion in order to find out for themselves just what the steerage passenger wanted to make him comfortable, and what points in the existing organisation could be improved. Thus they hit at the very foundation of the sailing packet's business by making the steamer a far more comfortable emigrant carrier, and on this a very large part of the prosperity of the Inman Line was founded.

But undoubtedly it also owed a lot to the fact that Inman had a full appreciation of the latest technical development. One or two iron screw steamers had been put on service, but no effort had been made to organise a fleet on those lines.

In 1854 William Inman was able to do without his partners, the Quaker Richardson Brothers, and assume sole management over the "Liverpool, New York and Philadelphia Steamship Company". He soon chartered the City of Manchester, City of Baltimore, and later the City of Washington to the French Government on excellent terms.

[A Century of Atlantic Travel, FG Bowen]

Treatise on Iron Ships [Steamships and their Story, E. Keble Chatterton]

William Inman was a strong advocate of screw propulsion and it was the success of the "Inman screws" which evidentially determined the Cunard Steamship Co. to abandon the use of paddle steamers.

[Merchant Steamers, Science Museum]

          The Inman Line commenced service in December 1850 and was acquired by the American Line in 1893. Its Terminal Ports were Liverpool and New York.

[Trans-Atlantic Passenger Ships, Eugene W.Smith]