Alfred Holt`s Blue Funnel Line established itself a superb reputation as the best-run cargo liner company. For many observers, that meant the best shipping company of all. It built technically superb ships, had them expertly crewed, and gave noble service in peace and war. However, its last years were far from glorious.

Alfred Holt was apprenticed as a railway locomotive engineer, although his family were Liverpool merchants and shipowners. Realising that locomotive engineering was well in advance of marine engineering, Holt applied some of its principles to powering ships. Using compounding and high boiler pressure, he achieved an enormous increase in efficiency. Because of the reduction in fuel consumption, his ships were the first that could steam from the UK to the Far East and carry not just coal for their engines, but also a profitable cargo.

The company Holt founded, the Ocean Steam Ship Company, became popularly known as Blue Funnel Line. Because he was setting out on a great adventure, Holt gave his ships names from the greatest adventure story he had read, Homer`s Odyssey: Agamemnon, Ajax and Achilles. These legendary Greek names, plus tall and distinguished blue funnels, became marks of excellence in shipping. Blue Funnel built ships to a higher class than required by even the most demanding classification society [definition]. Indeed, so confident was the company that its ships were well built and manned that it did not insure all of them - its policy only paid out if they lost two ships in any one year.