Robert Dollar Co.

History

Agency History Organized in 1900, Dollar spent its first two decades in the transpacific trade as "essentially a tramp operator, whose main cargoes were bulk, low-value merchandise not suitable for the larger and faster passenger-cargo liners of the Pacific Mail Steamship Lines." [1] Both APL and Dollar traced their corporate origins to the famous Pacific Mail Steamship Company (PMSS) formed in 1848.

Pacific Mail dominated stateside transpacific trade from 1867 to 1915. The Southern Pacific Railroad Company took control of the company in 1893. After the passage of the Panama Canal Act of 1912 and the LaFollette Seamen's Act of 1915, Southern Pacific Railroad began to liquidate the Pacific Mail fleet and withdraw from the transpacific trade. International Mercantile Marine purchased four Pacific Mail transpacific steamers; the remainder of the PMSS fleet and the company name were acquired by W.R. Grace & Co. As a subsidiary of Grace, Pacific Mail continued to operate coastwise service under its own house flag and purchased three new vessels with which it resumed transpacific service (and, briefly, round-the-world service) between 1916 and 1921. Pacific Mail Steamship Company officially ceased to exist in 1925 when Dollar acquired the company's name, house flag and goodwill from Grace.

As PMSS withdrew from transpacific service, Dollar expanded steadily in a slow build-up to the creation in 1924 of its own permanent round-the-world service. Dollar, and later APL, based its claim to PMSS as a direct predecessor company on its assumption of the "shell" of the old company--its name and its unused transpacific and round-the-world routes. This service, along with profitable intercoastal cargo business, gave Dollar and its American Mail Line (AML) subsidiary a near monopoly on U.S. shipping in the Pacific Coast.

This dominance did not come without a price. As its debt grew through the 1930s, Dollar's fortunes declined. In August 1938, faced with insurmountable debt and probable foreclosure, the company entered into an agreement that its creditors felt was the best alternative to bankruptcy. The U.S. Maritime Commission acquired the 93% stock interest in the Dollar Line held by the Dollar family. As payment, the U.S. Maritime Commission assumed all debts and personal obligations of the Dollar family in the line, began to pay off the debts and to rebuild the deteriorated Dollar fleet. Based on this arrangement and a large loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the revitalized company, renamed American President Lines (APL), played a significant part in the war effort of the U.S. merchant marine during World War II. The end of the war coincided with the repayment of the old Dollar Line's last creditors and with the initiation of the Dollar Line Case, a lawsuit brought by the Dollar family in an attempt to force the government to return the now profitable company to Dollar control. The litigation dragged on until 1952, when the government sold its stock in APL, keeping half of the proceeds and giving the other half to the Dollar family.

[1] Rene de la Pedraja, A Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Merchant Marine and Shipping Industry (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 178.

Excerpted from the agency history in the American President Lines Records finding aid written by Roberto Landazuri.

From the guide to the Robert Dollar Company photographs, 1858-1960, (San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park (Calif.))