United Fruit Company

The Fleets

The company owes its existence to a Captain Baker who transported a group of miners to Venezuela from Boston in 1870 on his auxiliary schooner TELEGRAPH and put into Port Morant, Jamaica on his homeward voyage to find a cargo to pay his expenses on the northbound trip. He bought 160 stems of unripe bananas there for $40 which he sold in Jersey City for $320. The following year he returned to Jamaica and commenced shipping bananas to Boston. He gradually purchased more and larger schooners and also purchased banana plantations in Jamaica.

A working arrangement was agreed with Atlas SS Co, Liverpool until 1901 when it was bought out by Hamburg America Line. In 1884 Baker with J. H. Freeman and A. Preston formed the Boston Fruit Co and purchased their own steamship and in 1889 sold their remaining schooners. Boston Fruit Co. merged with leading operators in the fruit trade in 1899 to form the United Fruit Company of New Jersey.

The company continued to expand into Caribbean and Central American territories and to absorb competing companies. They purchased a half share in Standard Fruit Co in 1906, but became a target of anti-trust laws and was forced to sell it in 1908. In 1909 they also sold their shares in the Atlantic Fruit Co and was ordered to divest itself of all shares in the Bluefields SS Co. By 1910 UFC had gained a controlling interest in the British owned Elders & Fyffes Co and ships were regularly transferred between the two fleets. United Fruit merged with Cuyamel Fruit Co in 1929.

In 1970 United Fruit Co was absorbed into United Brands and subsequently divested itself of its American flagged ships. All ships owned by the firm were then registered under the Honduran flag under the ownership of Empresa Hondurena de Vapores, Tela, Honduras. United Brands was taken over by Chiquita Brands International, Cincinnati in the 1980s and owns the largest fleet of banana boats in the world, but none of them now sail under the US flag.

The fleet list contains passenger and freight vessels owned by the United Fruit Company through its directly operated American, British, Dutch, Honduran and Panamanian shipping companies, plus time chartered ships - Norwegian, British, German and Danish. It does not include Elders & Fyffes ships which did not work directly under United Fruit Co. (See Elders & Fyffes)

Many thanks to Ted Finch for his assistance in collecting this data. The following list was extracted from various sources. This is not an all inclusive list but should only be used as a guide.

Routes

• U.S. East coast and New Orleans and Gulf ports to the Carribean, Central America and Colombia.

Ships