The family of Robert Constantine had lived for many centuries in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the village of Haworth of Bronte sisters fame. Robert Constantine, father of the founder, took up an appointment as the manager of the British Railway Company in Flensburg in 1850 for the railway network that spanned the waterways of Schleswig-Holstein between Denmark and Germany. Joseph Constantine, his son, was born six years later in the town, then part of Denmark. However, following German attacks on Denmark, Flensburg became part of Germany and the family moved back to Yorkshire, settling in Middlesbrough. Robert and his brother William had delayed the German forces by sabotaging part of the railway stock under their control. After schooling, Joseph was apprenticed to the Middlesbrough firm of compass manufacturers and ship chandlers, Warley Pickering & Company.

His first investment in shipping was a number of 64ths in the brig Governor, followed by a greater number of shares in the three masted barques Homewood and P.G. Carvill renamed Norwood in 1885/87. These were registered under the Norwegian flag and skippered by their nominal owner, Capt. Klaveness, but were managed from Middlesbrough. This system was used by several other British tramp owners, including Macbeth & Gray of Glasgow, for the various advantages which then applied to the Norwegian registry. The barques were employed on tramping and chartered for South American voyages. Robert Constantine died in September 1900 and although he did not take an active part in his son’s shipping ventures he helped finance them. Joseph Constantine had purchased his first steam tramp in 1891, renaming her Toftwood, with a similar nomenclature for his dozen tramps owned before the tum of the century.

Riftswood, purchased in 1897, was the first tramp registered under the Red Duster, but her career came to an untimely end ten years later. She had been chartered by the Admiralty to take coal to Barbados for the battle-cruiser Indefatigable, but spontaneous combustion of the cargo forced her to be abandoned off the North Cap of St. Lucia in March 1907. The North Cap Estates of the island are almost inaccessible even today, and the crew were lucky to be rescued by French estate owners. Laurelwood of 1896 had a deadweight capacity of 3,500 tons on a draft of 18 feet 6 inches, with a part awning deck and web frames to give clear holds and with the officers ‘midships and some of the crew in the fo’c’stle. She was wrecked in January 1904 at Chausse de Sein, France whilst on a voyage from Rio de Janeiro to Middlesbrough with manganese ore.

William Constantine, brother of Joseph, acted as Superintendent, overseeing the building of new tramps. The business was managed from the same office in Dock Street, Middlesbrough as a ship’s chandlery, both as Constantine & Pickering. In 1901 the name was changed to the Constantine & Pickering Steamship Company but the tramps continued to be owned on the 64ths system. Already the tramps voyaged world-wide, and there was also a healthy Baltic trade homeward with pitprops, coal being the outward cargo in all cases. A few ships had been taken up by the British Government during the Boer War, but as yet there was no chartering out to liner companies. Walter Runciman’s first new tramp, Blakemoor, built in 1889 at South Shields, was purchased in 1900 and renamed Rosewood. Parkwood of 1906 was specially designed for the Pomeron ore trade with dimensions to allow her to enter that port. A coastal trade was begun in 1907, which ran alongside the deep-sea tramping business. In 1908, Puritan was purchased from T. & J. Harrison, and Lindenhall from the West Hartlepool Steam Navigation Co. Ltd., and unusually they were not renamed. Warley Pickering was completed in 1912 in Middlesbrough by Raylton, Dixon & Co. Ltd. and was their first new tramp to have a deadweight capacity of over 6,000 tonnes.

Marine casualties included Copsewood built as Craighill in 1882 and purchased ten years later but wrecked on 16th October 1895 on Cross Islands while on a voyage from Archangel to London with timber. Laurelwood was built in 1896 but was wrecked on 11th January 1904 at Chausse de Sein in France while on a voyage from Rio de Janeiro to the Tees with manganese ore. Riftswood built in 1890 as Sam Handford and purchased in 1897 was abandoned on fire off the North Cap of St. Lucia while on a voyage with coal to rendezvous and refuel the battleship H.M.S. Indefatigable. As a side interest, Joseph Constantine took a big interest in, and became a director of the Harrowing Steamship Co. Ltd. of Whitby. In 1910, the ship’s stores and chandlery business was sold to Furness, Withy & Co. Ltd., and continued to trade as Maritime Stores Ltd. There were regular trades at this time as well as tramping, including to the Mediterranean, West Indies, West Africa, and the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf ports of the U.S.A.

The smaller Constantine vessels participated in the coal trade out to the Baltic returning with timber, while those engaged in the coal trade from North East coast ports to the Thames and Shoreham were owned by the separate concern of R. A. Constantine and T. H. Donking, with the registered partners being Robert Constantine, son of Joseph Constantine, and Thomas Donking, a cousin of J. Warley Pickering. Joseph Constantine also held a portfolio of shares in foreign companies, ranging from Australian gold mines, Mexican silver mines and power companies, Costa Rican railway companies, and Brazilian coffee plantations.

World War I

On the outbreak of war in August 1914 some 22 ocean-going tramps and six coasters were owned. Immediately, Hazelwood was taken up by the British Government as a military stores ship for a short time, while Larchwood, Eskwood, Birchwood, Levenwood, Mordenwood, Goodwood and Kirnwood were taken up as colliers. Teeswood of 1882 and Rosewood of 1889 (ex Blakemoor) were purchased by the Admiralty and scuttled as blockships at Scapa Flow. Wearwood was requisitioned and released no less than fourteen times during her war career. Kirnwood carried coal, sugar, timber, ammunition, sandbags, ore and wheat to and from many distant British bases. Maplewood was chartered to the Russian Government but was returned prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The following tramps were lost to enemy action, together with 32 crew members, during the Great War:-

• 2.4.1915 Lochwood – Torpedoed and sunk 25m SW of Start Point while on a voyage from Barry with coal.
• 8.10.1915 Thorpwood – Sunk by gunfire 122m S of Cape Martello, Crete while on a voyage from Tyne to Malta with coal.
• 10.1.1917 Brookwood – Sunk by gunfire 210m NW of Cape Finisterre while on a voyage from Penarth to Port Said with coal.
• 13.1.1917 Toflwood – Torpedoed and sunk 24 miles from Sept Iles while on a voyage from New York to Le Havre with general cargo.
• 5.2.1917 Warley Pickering – Torpedoed and sunk 46 miles NW of Fastnet while on a voyage from Sagunto to Tees with ore.
• 16.2.1917 Queenswood – Sunk by gunfire 6m SW of Hartland Point while on a voyage from Rouen to Port Talbot in ballast.
• 12.3.1917 Bilswood – Mined and sunk 8m NW of Alexandria while on a voyage from Malta.
• 7.4.1917 Maplewood -Torpedoed and sunk 47m SW of Cape Sperone, Sardinia while on a voyage from La Goulette to Hartlepool with ore. Capt. W. Mudd taken prisoner.
• 19.5.1917 Mordenwood – Torpedoed and sunk 90m SSE of Cape Matapan.
• 21.8.1917 Goodwood – Torpedoed and sunk 28m NNW of Cape Bon while on a voyage from Naples to Tunis in ballast.
• 3.1.1918 Birchwood – Torpedoed and sunk 25m E of Blackwater L.V. while on a voyage from Clyde to Devonport with coal.

In addition, Parkwood became a marine loss when she grounded homeward bound from Archangel, where she had delivered a cargo of munitions in July 1915. Her Master was only partly to blame as Russian navigational aids in the White Sea were very poorly maintained during the war. Two coasters were also lost, including Larchwood of 689 grt in a collision with the British steamer Argus 1,238/83 while on a voyage from Penarth with a cargo of coal, and Cedarwood of 654 grt when mined and sunk off the Suffolk coast while on a voyage from Middlesbrough to Fecamp with a cargo of pig iron. However, on the positive side, three new tramps and coasters were completed during the war.

Inter-War Years

In 1919, the ‘A’ type war standard tramp War Mallow was purchased and renamed Briarwood, but was sold two years later with the fleet then reduced to only three tramps, Kirnwood of 1905, Harlseywood of 1907 and Wearwood of 1912. J. Warley Pickering had retired by 1920, when the Joseph Constantine Steamship Line Ltd. was incorporated with a paid up capital of £999,900, held almost completely by members of the family. The boom and slump conditions in 1920/21 reduced freight rates to an all-time low, and the fleet was further reduced to only two tramps in 1922 in Wearwood of 1912 and Maplewood ex Ronalee and two small coasters, However, two second hand tramps had been purchased by the following year and renamed Kingswood and Briarwood. A newbuilding programme of ten tramps was then begun between 1925 and 1930, with the first completed in 1925 as Queenswood by a Dutch yard near Rotterdam:-

10 NEW TRAMPS OF BETWEEN 6,000 – 7,500 DWT

New blood was at the helm of the company by this time, as the founder Joseph Constantine had died at his home of Harlsey Hall in Northallerton in 1922 of cancer aged 65 years. He left a widow, two sons and two daughters, with Robert Alfred Constantine of Tanton Grange in Stokesley, and William Whitesmith Constantine, inheriting the shares of the shipping company along with Elsie Constantine and Margarita Constantine. A generous donation of £80,000 had been made in the will of the founder to establish a college for technical education, including shipbuilding and engineering, in the town, completed and opened on 2nd July 1930 by the Prince of Wales as the Constantine Technical College, and now part of Teesside University.

The fleet was kept busy with regular tramping services into the St. Lawrence, and the export of large quantities of timber from the Baltic to South Africa as well as worldwide tramping. The voyage position of the Constantine tramps in June 1927 was:-

An agreement was made in 1933 with the National Gypsum Company to build a pier and loading chutes for the export of gypsum from Cheticamp in Cape Breton (Nova Scotia) to the U.K. and Europe. The entry to this small port was narrow and hazardous but dredging was provided by the Canadian Government. A similar facility at Dingwall, Cape Breton was not brought into service until 1940.

Kirnwood and Hazelwood were fitted with Maierform bows in 1936, and in October of that year the voyage position of the Constantine tramping fleet was:-

A trio of new tramps were similarly fitted with Maierform bows during construction at the Hawthorn, Leslie yard in Hebburn in 1936/37. Windsorwood, Yorkwood and Balmoralwood were built with financial aid from the Scrap & Loan Scheme, and were the largest ships owned by the company at almost 9,200 dwt. Nine old tramps had to be purchased and scrapped to qualify for the loan of £324,000 for the trio. They were registered under a new company, the Constantine Shipping Co. Ltd. formed in June 1935, and were built for a regular run between Swansea and Port Talbot to Quebec and Montreal. Homeward cargoes were timber, grain, gypsum or iron ore during the ice-free season of the St. Lawrence, and off season the trio were chartered for South American and South African ore, Mauritius sugar, Australian grain and River Plate grain. They also carried a dozen passengers, housed in eight single cabins and two double cabins, with tickets issued by the company for this part liner operation. They were fitted with triple expansion engines and a Gotaverken turbo-compressor, had large ‘tween decks, with the holds fitted with grain shifting boards, and good cargo handling gear.

Kingswood suffered a massive donkey boiler explosion in January 1937 while at anchor off Port Pirie waiting to load zinc concentrates. The boiler amazingly ended up in the forepeak after smashing through four bulkheads in a 164 feet long rampage, with a huge hole blown in the starboard plating of the forepeak, and the tramp was then towed all the way home to the Tyne at great expense by a Dutch tug. The Constantine tramps and coasters frequently loaded coal on the Tyne, and my coal records show that Levenwood and Linwood were loading coal in the Tyne on 31st October 1938, while Northwood was under repair in dry dock at the Readhead yard in South Shields. The voyage position of the Constantine tramping fleet in August 1938 was:-

World War II

Just before the outbreak of WWII, the company moved into a new building at York House, Middlesbrough, a stone’s throw away from the thriving Constantine Technical College. The fleet now consisted of nine deep-sea tramps and nine coasters, of which six tramps and three coasters were to be lost during the coming conflict. In addition, eleven out of 31 managed ships, mostly French and Scandinavian, were also lost to enemy action. The owned tramps lost were:-

Many ships were damaged by bombing and machine gunning around British coasts, especially the coastal fleet. The tramp Wearwood was badly damaged by a night of bombing at Liverpool in March 1941, but was repaired to fight again. The Maierform trio of Windsorwood, Yorkwood and Balmoralwood frequently acted as Convoy Commodore Ships due to their passenger accommodation. When Windsorwood was lost, her convoy had no escorts at all and she was leading a long column when hit by two torpedoes. The first exploded in no. 2 hold and the second in the engine room, with the survivors having to endure a cold night in an open boat before being picked up the next morning.

Levenwood evacuated three hundred troops from the Dunkirk beaches in early June 1940 under constant enemy fire and even managed to shoot down a German fighter with her gun. R.A. Constantine moved down to London during the war to manage a part of the Ministry of War Transport requirements for shipping, with a total of thirty ships of varying sizes managed by the Middlesbrough office for the M.O.W.T.

Briarwood carried stores and men for the British Expeditionary Force to St. Nazaire in 1939 and resumed normal trading in November of that year. She was the last ship to leave Narvik with iron ore before the port was taken over by the enemy. She was then fitted with mine degaussing equipment and resumed North Atlantic convoys, shooting down an aircraft in May 1940, and escaping from the famous Jervis Bay convoy in November. She was selected in October 1941 for the first Arctic convoy to Russia and sustained ice damage at Molotofski near Archangel in mid-December. She managed to navigate the 70 miles of ice before reaching open water 18 days later. She continued on the Russian convoys and was Convoy Commodore Ship in May 1942 when the cruiser Edinburgh was lost. During the winter of 1942/43 she made the run independently to Russia when convoys were suspended. She resumed North Atlantic convoys in April and survived the war, a very lucky ship indeed!

Post World War II Trading

The surviving tramps Briarwood and Wearwood were sold for good prices after the end of the war in 1945/46, the former going to the Stag Line of North Shields as Gardenia, with the latter sold to Galbraith, Pembroke & Co. Ltd. and renamed Harrow. The company then moved into Mediterranean services with the purchase of Whimster & Co. Ltd. of Glasgow in 1946. This company had been formed in 1904 to manage two steamers and a further trio from 1906 on services to Spain. The Gart Steamship Co. Ltd. was formed in 1911 with a capital of £10,000 for Iberian services, the ships all having names beginning with ‘Gart’. A new motorship named Gartwood of 2,414 grt and 2,986 dwt was launched on 30th April 1946 and completed in October 1946 by the Burntisland yard (Yard 303) for Constantines with four holds served by nine derricks on three masts and a service speed of eleven knots from an eight cylinder 2SCSA British Polar diesel engine. Lochwood followed as Yard 331 from Burntisland of 1,689 grt and 2,370 dwt, launched on 13th July 1949 and completed in November 1949, with three holds served by eight derricks on two masts and a set of posts and also powered by an eight cylinder 2SCSA British Polar diesel engine to give a service speed of eleven knots.

Constantines Lines employed a four ship service between Glasgow and Irish Sea ports and French and Italian Mediterranean ports. Gartwood of 1946, Lochwood of 1949, Avonwood of 1944, and Edenwood of 1943 were given grey hulls for the service, with the latter pair modernized and given passenger accommodation for the Mediterranean service to Marseille and Italian ports. There was a good trade in dry fruit and oranges and apples from French and Italian ports, with also tomato pulp from Naples.

Ten regional Constantine offices were opened in the U.K. in post-war years for shipbroking, ship agency, liner agency, port agency, wharfage, freight forwarding and passenger travel services. In 1947, two additions to the shipping side of the Group were a controlling interest in Norton Lines Ltd. with services from Antwerp, Holland and France to Portugal, and the purchase of freight forwarders Neale & Wilkinson Ltd. and their subsidiary Stewart & Esplen Ltd. The latter company represented the ships of Japanese line Nippon Yushen Kaisha (NYK) while in British ports, and for a short time also the ships of the United Arab Shipping Corporation (UASC). The Golden Cross Line Ltd. of Cardiff with services to the Mediterranean was a final addition to the shipping services when acquired in 1959.

A Canadian service was started in the summer of 1953 between Toronto, Hamilton and Montreal and St. John’s (NF) using the steamer Highliner of 3,349 grt and purchased in 1959 as Marbella, and the service continued until 1966. The ships employed on this service were transferred to the Mediterranean services during the winter ice-up on the St. Lawrence. However, the competition from Canadian Pacific Steamships proved too strong. Nevertheless, deep sea services had been operated by Constantines for twenty years from 1946 to 1966.

The Constantine coastal fleet of up to 3,000 dwt that was not engaged on Const-antine Lines services to the Mediterranean traded in the British and near Continental trades. Teeswood was completed by the Burntisland yard in September 1953 as Yard 359, but was abandoned by her crew on 29th July 1956 and capsized in a storm four miles east of Dungeness while on a voyage from Blyth to Shoreham with coal, and later sank two miles off Dover. Levenwood, the former Empire Bromley of 1945, Eskwood of 1951 (Burntisland Y342), Copsewood of 1951 (Burntisland Y343), Teeswood of 1953 (Burntisland Y 359), Tynewood of 1957 (Ailsa) and Thameswood of 1957 (Ailsa) were given their annual dry-docking at the South Shields yard of Tyne Dock Engin-eering, next to the ferry landing for the short crossing to North Shields. The final coastal ships were sold between 1966 and 1968, with Eastwood of 1960, built by the Ailsa Ship-building yard, sold in 1968 for conversion into the Italian tanker Palmavera of 2,830 dwt. The Constantine family houseflag was pulled down for the last time in 1968.

The Constantine Group continued in business for many more years with freight forwarding, shipbroking and agency and other interests. It is interesting to note that the company had the same voting rights and representation on the Tees & Hartlepool Port Authority as the much larger liner company of Furness, Withy & Co. Ltd. The Constantine family had owned over ninety tramps and coasters, and managed a further forty vessels during 83 years of British shipowning and ship management. Constantines were the premier tramping and coastal shipping firm on the river Tees, and are long remembered by the people of Middlesbrough.

Constantine Shipping and International Services

In 1963, Robert A. Constantine retired and new blood was brought into the company to manage the three strands of the company trading of Shipping Division, henceforward managed by his son Norman Constantine, Property Division henceforward managed by his other son Joseph Constantine, and Ship Agency Division under Joseph Barnard, the son of his sister Elsie. The centre of operations moved from Middlesbrough to London, although the Chairman and Finance Director of the company remained in Middlesbrough. The ship agency work particularly covered the hundreds of ships that traded annually into and out of the river Tees, as well as representing the interests of Saguenay Shipping vessels of Canada arriving in the Tyne and other British ports with aluminium ingots on their triangular services from the Caribbean and Canada. The Joseph Constantine Steamship Line Ltd. was wound up in 1966 and replaced by a new parent company of Constantine Holdings Ltd.

The Constantine Shipping and International Services included the Property Division of the company and made investments in new offices and hotels at Lancaster Gate in London and elsewhere in the U.K., Canada and the United States of America, while freight forwarding and packing of heavy machinery, art and antiques exhibitions, courier services, yacht transportation and items for export shipping also figured heavily in the work of Constantine Shipping and International Services. Yachts were transported by the subsidiary of Peters & May for the start of the prestigious Whitbread Round the World Race and for the America’s Cup, and to return the yachts to their home bases. Lloyds Machinery Packing of Manchester and John Stevenson & Sons of London were part of the Constantine Group packing and shipping organisation, moving large items of industrial, mining and excavation equipment from Hull and other ports to Russia and China. The Constantine Group also specialised in the transport of hazardous goods e.g. explosives, tank armour, and military vehicles, as well as in the stuffing of containers with general cargo from many parts of the U.K. for shipment to Australia on OCL and ACT container ships. The Constantine Group also transported the valuable Gold Coach for H. M. The Queen during her Golden Jubilee.

An estate agency firm called Connells with hundreds of offices throughout the U.K. was acquired in 1969. The very profitable Constantine Group continued in business after the Millennium, and are still in business today in their 135 year history in the property, manufacturing e.g. Elddis Caravans of Consett, logistics and wind energy fields. Joseph Barnard was knighted for services to business in 1986, and his cousin Susannah Constantine, daughter of Joseph Constantine born on 3rd June 1962, regularly appears on television as a fashion expert and in other entertainment features. The Constantine Group is now based in London and Surrey, and is a very enterprising and successful group of many companies in the shipping, logistics, property and other fields of business, and is managed by two grandsons of R. A. Constantine and Margarita Constantine. I wish to thank the excellent Constantine Group company history from 1885 to 2010, written by Roland Vernon, grandson of Margarita Constantine and made available at http://www.constantinegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/constantine-history-PDF.pdf.