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Clipper ship launches success storyThe good ship Percy Douglas
The Percy
Douglas, so named after Major
General Sir Robert Percy Douglas, the Lieutenant General of
Jersey, in the Channel Islands belonged to Thomas Hayley. Registered
in 1861, the 781-tonne clipper ship operated out of Liverpool and it
was recorded by Lloyds that she was destined for the China tea
trade. The details are sketchy as to whether she did actually sail
between Liverpool and China, or merely to any Far Eastern port. In 1869,
Thomas Hayley made an important voyage on the Percy Douglas
accompanied by his son Charles Pickering Hayley. The journey was
part of Charles's coming of age celebrations and his half-sisters
Julia and Adelaide sailed with them, making the lengthy trip past
the Cape of Good Hope before reaching the scenic port of Galle. They
disembarked at Galle and family history has it that Charles so liked
what he saw of the sleepy seaport that he may have well decided to
return and make his fortune there. Back in
Liverpool, Charles went through his business training before
boarding the Percy Douglas once again in 1871. He reached Galle
safely in late August or early September, but the clipper ship was
fated never to return. She was wrecked off the coast of Rangoon.
Charles Hayley worked first with a firm of shipping agents and when
they folded up he rented a house in the centre of Galle Fort in
Pedlar Street which was both office and godown and launched his
business, exporting cinnamon and citronella oil and importing luxury
goods such as claret from Britain. But he knew the coir yarn
business was the way forward and he was fortunate enough to acquire
more properties in Pedlar Street. Soon he had a large godown, with
an expensive baling press. Chas. P. Hayley and Co. was now a force
to be reckoned with. The business
prospered though staff was always kept to a minimum and soon
branched into plantations, offering management services which
included a good deal of financing to other plantation companies in
the south. They survived the coffee crash, though not unscathed and
helped estates switch to tea. In 1909,
Charles Hayley made a strategic move, by going into partnership with
W.W. Kenny, a plumbago exporter. With Colombo offering better port
facilities, the coir export business boomed. He also panned
for gold in the Gin Ganga and though they found small quantities,
that scheme was abandoned. But a timber mill where tea chests turned
out from logs floated down from Udugama estates prospered until
cheap Momi chests from Japan knocked them out of business. The agency for
Thorneycroft lorries saw them begin a partnership with Whittall and
Corp and Boustead Bros. launching the Southern Province Transport
Co. in Matara after the turn of the century, serving tea and rubber
plantation companies. Other very
profitable ventures were an ice manufacturing plant at Hikkaduwa,
where Charles Hayley employed Tom Walker, who later set up his own
business the New Colombo Ice Company, better known today as Ceylon
Cold Stores. After Walker left, the factory manufactured soap but
was done in by the 1930s slump. The death of
his wife saw Charles Hayley returning to England leaving the running
of the firm to his sons Alec and Steuart, and son-in-law O.J.
Steiger. Hayley and
Kenny and Chas P. Hayley were made Private Limited Companies in 1935
and 1943, respectively. When the fallout from World War 11 demanded new avenues, the firm of Chas. P. Hayley was a wholly owned subsidiary of Hayley and Kenny, all shares of which were exclusively owned by a retired partner Steuart Hayley and the heirs of other partners living abroad. George G. Hayley, a grandson of the founder and son of Dr. F.A. Hayley QC was appointed a director of Chas. P. Hayley in 1948 along with Tony Humphryes. The names of Giorgio Bobbiese, Arthur Woosnam, E.C. Stewart, Ken Irvine, Brent Moore-Boyle and Dennis Fuller figure prominently in this period along with J. Neilson-Crawford and T.B. Johnson who ran Hayleys Engineering. In the early
1950s, several young Ceylonese were recruited as executives and a
training school for them set up at the Galle office. Headquartered
still in the godown where Chas P. Hayley launched his firm in 1878,
the company is still a major player in the manufacture of coir mats
and matting for export, producing also curled coir fibre which is
used by many in its natural state or after being sprayed with rubber
latex and vulcanised. (Extracted from A Short History of the Hayley Companies in Ceylon by George G. Hayley). Background
The
Percy Douglas was as 781-ton ship. She was originally laid down by
Edward Allen of St Aubin at his yard which was situated just behind
where the current Parish Hall stands. This was to be his sixth
vessel. Allen was declared bankrupt and the court awarded the half
completed hull to his chief creditor, a Liverpudlian entrepreneur,
Thomas Hayley, described as ‘a gentleman’, who lived at Hillside,
Beaumont. See also:
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