Charles Mark Palmer
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Sir Charles Mark Palmer, 1st Baronet (3 November 1822 - 4 June 1907) was an English shipbuilder born in South Shields. He was also a Liberal politician and Member of Parliament. His father, originally the captain of a whaler, moved in 1828 to Newcastle upon Tyne, where he owned a ship owning and ship-broking business.
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[edit] Early life
At the age of 15 Charles Palmer entered a shipping business in the city. After six months, he travelled to Marseilles, France, where his father had procured him a post in a large commercial house, at the same time entrusting him with the local agency of his own business. After two years experience in Marseilles he entered his father's business in Newcastle, and in 1842 he became a partner.
His business capacity attracted the attention of a leading local colliery owner, and he was appointed manager of the Marley Hill colliery in which he became a partner in 1846. Subsequently he was made one of the managers of the associated collieries north and south of the Tyne owned by Lord Ravensworth, Lord Wharncliffe, the marquess of Bute and Lord Strathmore.
[edit] Emergence as an entrepreneur
Using the profits of the Marley Hill colliery, he gradually purchased the properties of his erstwhile employer, while simultaneously he greatly developed the recently established coke trade, obtaining the coke contracts for several of the large English and continental railways.
[edit] Establishment of Palmer's shipyard
About 1850 the question of coal-transport to the London market became a serious question for north country colliery proprietors. Palmer therefore built, largely according to his own plans, the John Bowes, the first iron screw collier, and several other steam-colliers, in a yard established by him at Jarrow, then a small Tyneside village.
He then purchased iron mines in Yorkshire and erected large shipbuilding yards along the Tyne at Jarrow, including blast-furnaces, steel-works, rolling-mills and engine works, all on a massive scale. The firm produced warships as well as merchant vessels, and its system of rolling armour plates, introduced in 1856, was generally adopted by other builders.
In 1865 he turned the business into Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company Limited.
[edit] Later life
In 1885, Palmer was elected as Liberal Member of Parliament for Jarrow. He sat for the constituency until his death. In 1886, Palmer's services in connection with the settlement of the costly dispute between British ship-owners and the Suez Canal Company (of which he was then a director) were rewarded with a baronetcy.
He died in London in 1907.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
