4. Summary

In the brief span of five years between the opening of the Grand Trunk's central division and Hamilton's bankruptcy, the Royal Mail Line's proprietors seem to have used just about every organizational formula available short of incorporation. The regional shipping conferences had not survived the immediate threat of railway competition. As active participation in the line declined through attrition, the cartel devolved into a two proprietor operation and ultimately into the original combination of owned and chartered vessels (albeit refined by new agreements with the Richelieu Company and the Grand Trunk). By this point Hamilton, as he had been twenty years previous, was vulnerable to an extended delay in the anticipated economic upswing.

It took four seasons of unrelenting economic hardship to break Hamilton. Fighting a company which itself was staving off bankruptcy by a series of special favours, he essayed a variety of alternate strategies: retrenchment, expansion, price competition and price fixing. Despite a rapid succession of associates Hamilton had kept the Royal Mail Line (as it was still popularly known) operational. Was his failure inevitable? The answer lies in the record of his boats after the depression lifted.

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Chapter 5 appeared in FreshWater.