Elder Dempster Lines Holdings Limited - England

Beautifully engraved Specimen certificate from Elder Dempster Lines Holdings Limited dated 2-25-43. This historic document was printed by Bradbury, Wilkinson & Company Limited and has an ornate border around it with the company's logo in top center.

Elder Dempster Lines was a major shipping company which had its own Cadet College to train its seagoing deck, engineer, purser, and catering officers of the future. Based in Liverpool it operated three liners (mailboats) on a scheduled service to Ghana and Nigeria. A large number of cargo and express cargo ships sailed from the UK / Continent to West Africa and the USA. Cargoes included general and manufactured goods outward, and on return voyages logs, sawn timber and ply, palm kernels, palm oil, groundnuts, rubber, cocoa, and tin.

Elder Dempster ships sailed from a number of UK ports, including Liverpool, Tilbury, Newcastle, Hull, Glasgow, and Hull. Continental ports were primarily Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Rouen.

En route ports were Las Palmas, Funchal, and Casablanca, and down the Coast the buff-coloured funnels of Elder Dempster ships were to be seen at Dakar, Bathurst, Conakry, Freetown, Monrovia, Cape Palmas, Abidjan, Takoradi, Tema, Lome, Cotonou, Lagos/Apapa, Burutu, Warri, Sapele, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Victoria, Tiko, Douala, Bata, Libreville, Port Gentil, Pointe Noire, Boma, Matadi, Luanda, and Lobito (the latter 5,000 nautical miles from Liverpool).

In 1989 Elder Dempster Lines was acquired by the French Delmas group and Elder Dempster Agencies operated as the liner shipping agency for the group in the UK until 2000, when it became Delmas UK.

History from Elder Dempster Lines Website.