Who The Hell Was George Campbell?

by Larry Smith

Shipping is the lifeblood of the global economy. And while most people know that the Bahamas is a major flag of convenience (with over 1600 vessels registered), few are aware that one of the world's greatest ship designers once called our islands home.

George Campbell left his imprint on an entire global industry, but moved about largely unnoticed - and nowhere more so than here. In fact, when his estate recently gave $10 million to the College of the Bahamas, most Bahamians had never heard his name, although he had lived in Nassau intermittently since the late 1960s.

His contribution to industrial development goes back to the dark days of the Second World War, when the first mass-produced freighter - known as the Liberty ship - helped win the war and drove the resurgence of global trade afterwards.

But Campbell had nothing to do with the Liberty ship - a simple 11,000-ton freighter fitted with a crude reciprocating steam engine capable of pushing it at a leisurely 10 ½ knots. Mass produced in American shipyards to a British design, these ships delivered the troops and supplies that were crucial to the Allied war effort.

They were designed for economy and speed of construction, and by the middle of the war they were being churned out in under 60 days at $2 million a pop. Altogether, about 2700 were built and several hundred managed to survive the war. They were acquired by shipowners who wanted to rebuild their fleets.

"The sale of about 100 Liberties to Greek shippers launched a wave of expansion and prosperity that has continued for almost 60 years," retired Nassau-based shipping consultant Bill Bardelmeier told me recently. "Throughout the 1950s the Liberty ship was the benchmark-setter for world shipping."

But as we said, George Campbell had absolutely nothing to do with that.

A former shipyard apprentice of Scottish descent, Campbell had been posted to Canada by the Royal Navy in 1941 to help salvage and repair war-damaged ships. After the war he stayed on, setting up a small marine engineering firm in Montreal with his brother Jack.

But in 1949, as the Japanese ship industry began to revive, he moved to Tokyo. It was the beginning of a relationship that lasted 35 years and produced the world's most influential ship design firm - GTR Campbell & Co. Campbell attracted billions of dollars to Japan, and was a major factor in the country's rise to dominance in world shipbuilding.

It was the Liberty ship that led to his amazing success. By the 1960s these workhorses had become obsolete and shippers were clamouring for a replacement. Campbell - as the lead designer for Ishikawajima Harima Heavy Industries (IHI) - was in an ideal position to develop a new vessel. It was called the Freedom class, and hundreds were produced from 1965 onwards.

According to Bardelmeier, "these new vessels were capable of fitting economically into modern shipyard production methods, thus becoming cheaper to produce and able to be marketed at an attractive price. Campbell and IHI became the most famous team in the industry."

Bardelmeier had a passing acquaintance with Campbell years ago: "We met in Nassau and Tokyo, but were never very friendly toward each other- not for any particular reason except we both had rather snotty egos professionally. He was a bit of a dour curmudgeon I thought."

The Japanese shipbuilder, IHI, became one of the world's largest, while GTR Campbell & Co produced a stream of advanced but simple to operate vessels that could be mass produced. Shipyards around the world began buying licenses to use Campbell’s designs for tankers, bulk carriers, research ships, coast guard cutters and icebreakers.

On delivery of the first Freedom ship in 1965, the head of IHI acknowledged that “Mass production of commercial ships has never been carried out, except in the case of the Liberty ships during the war. But there should be no reason for not adopting the idea for shipbuilding.”

Campbell had developed one of the most successful standard vessel designs ever conceived. And in time, he became a shipowner himself. "He lived frugally and needed an investment outlet for the substantial design fees that were pouring in," Bardelmeier explained. "He established a Nassau office in the late 60s and owned one of the Chertsey penthouses on West Bay Street."

Campbell's shipping operations were to take the name Dockendale, after the family farm where he was raised in northern England. The company was managed by an engineer named Les Fernandes, and grew to control a fleet of 33 vessels. Fernandes developed a substantial staff of Bahamians who run the day to day operation in Nassau with satellite offices in other major world entrepots.

"I attended a luncheon for the whole Dockendale staff some years ago,"Bardelmeier said, "and came away with the distinct feeling that they had an unusual degree of group spirit and loyalty exceeding anything I had ever seen. Focused effort was being made to send Nassau staff to fill vacation slots in Australia and the Far East, and the Bahamians seemed delighted at the chance to gain a broader view of the organization and enjoyed working directly with employees around the world with whom they normally only had electronic contact."

By the early 1990s Dockendale had formed a joint venture partnership with Danish shipowner Torben Jensen's Clipper Group. Clipper controls about 250 vessels and makes the decisions on freight contracts and charters, while Dockendale handles the management details of hiring and paying the international crews, scheduling repairs and maintenance, and provisioning all the ships.

Dockendale is owned today by Fernandes and Jensen. And the Clipper Group operates about 10 per cent of the 1600 plus ships flying the Bahamian flag around the world. Both companies are based at Dockendale House on West Bay Street.
Meanwhile, Campbell's design firm was taken over by another Indian engineer named Anthony Prince, and is based at Sandy Port.

G T R Campbell Marine Consultants supervises shipbuilding projects in China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and India. Clipper has built over 40 ships with Prince, most of them under technical management by Dockendale. Prince also took the time to design a new inter-island trading vessel for the Bahamas.

The Fiesta Mail operated by the Mailboat Company is fitted with many advanced features and is said to be safer and more efficient than many of the older inter-island vessels that still are seen around Potters Cay. The 225-foot vessel can carry 46 cars, eight trailers or 20 containers, as well as up to 600 passengers.

Campbell's interests in Nassau have always been looked after by a Bahamian lawyer named Lowell Mortimer, who first met him in 1973 as a fresh-faced attorney in Darrel Rolle's law office.

"He didn't have many local investments and he spent only a month or so a year here, but our relationship continued until his death in 1994. The Freedom Foundation was set up 10 years before that to give scholarships to Bahamians to study agriculture and engineering. Over the years we have given about 30 of them - there are six doing marine engineering at State University of New York right now."

According to Mortimer, Campbell liked to consider himself a gentleman farmer and was very interested in promoting agricultural development. His foundation helped to create the College of the Bahamas' Poultry Research unit at Gladstone Road in the late 1990s, and recently agreed to fund a degree programme in environmental science and sustainable development.

"We felt that contributing to the College itself, rather than simply handing out scholarships, would benefit the Bahamas in a more universal and sustainable way," said Mortimer, who is now the Campbell estate's only trustee. The foundation draws on Campbell's estate, which has assets of $200 million in ships.

“This gift will support a programme that is central to national development and imperative for our future," COB President Jayne Hodder told the press recently. "Small island sustainability will be a flagship programme for the new University of The Bahamas where we will graduate students who will make a difference to this country through eco-tourism, environmental management, agricultural development, and policy development."

As a result of this donation, many Bahamians are hearing George Campbell's name for the first time - 14 years after he died at the age of 84. He was one of the great global innovators, an "invisible giant" who managed the remarkable feat of changing an industry while scrupulously avoiding public attention.

Comments

[Rick]

Marvellous piece Larry.
Thanks.

[John Hinchliffe]

A very impressive summary of an incredible man...thank you.

[Kimberly]

Thanks so much for this! Really solid writing.

[Lowell J. Mortimer]

Many thanks for your article on the late G.T.R. Campbell. I learned many little aspects on his life as a result of your well researched column. I will send a copy to Mrs. Campbell, the widow, who still resides in Tokyo.