The placement slip for the Titanic and her sister ship the Olympic .
Lloyd ’ s of London : How coffee , ships and a simple newsletter brought about a worldwide industry
by Colin Davidson
T he birth of Lloyd ’ s can be traced back to the year 1688 , to a coffee house on Tower Street in London , owned and operated by Edward Lloyd .
The proximity of the coffee house to the River Thames and the London dock area meant that Lloyd ’ s establishment was frequented by those involved in the shipping industry such as ship-owners , captains , sailors , merchants , and bankers . At the time this was a major center of trade in Europe . Consequently , a vast majority of Lloyd ’ s clientele visited Lloyd ’ s establishment not only to drink coffee , but also to conduct insurance deals amongst themselves .
Although he owned the coffee house , Lloyd was not otherwise involved in the shipping or insurance industries . His business existed to provide his patrons with a comfortable place to drink coffee , which at that time was a very popular and newly discovered beverage . The pleasant atmosphere leant itself to being a primary meeting place for business discussions . The insurance business started to grow in real when customers of the coffee house each began to accept , for a fee , a share of a particular insurance risk . They would do this by signing their names one under the other on a contract next to a column that showed the portion of the risk they would accept . The system of signing their names one under another on the contract led to the coining of the term “ underwriter .”
Without today ’ s technology , the only way to know whether ships arrived safely at foreign ports or if there
was a lost vessel was via word-of-mouth communication from returning mariners . Edward Lloyd realized that this information was extremely important in many ways to his customers . He started to glean this kind of data from all of his customers and put together a newsletter publicizing the information he had gathered . This newsletter , called Lloyd ’ s List , is still in existence , and today it is the leading newspaper read by people in the shipping industry . As time went on Lloyd ’ s coffee house became very popular with everyone involved in the new shipping and insurance industries . They were all looking for as much information as possible in order to be able to write insurance on a profitable basis .
Around this time customers of the coffee house got together and formed The Society for the Register of Shipping . The register ’ s function was to survey the hull and equipment of all ships , including those under construction , and classify them according to their seaworthiness . The information gathered by the surveys was entered into the register and was available to all members of the Society . It is interesting to note that the highest classification a ship could be given in the registry was A1 . To this day “ A1 ” is still used as a symbol of quality .
Around the period between 1799 and 1833 many disputes arose regarding the classification process . Additionally there were many disagreements about a rival facility that had begun competing for business . Competition between the two facilities eventually caused both to run into serious financial problems . In order to survive , in 1834 the two
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