Khedivial Mail S.S. Company was a British steamship company, established in 1898, that ran shipping services from Alexandria, Egypt and Suez, as well as shiprepair facilities, in succession to earlier ventures by the Egyptian authorities.
The company was a successor to the Medjidieh, a steamship company that operated in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, created by Said Pasha. The Medjidieh was also referred to as the Egyptian Steam Navigation Company, and quickly failed under the leadership of Said Pasha. His successor, Isma'il Pasha, restarted the venture in May 1863 in the hopes of creating a merchant marine for the modernising Egyptian nation. After falling into debt, Ismail used the company as leverage to try to gain control of and merge with the Egyptian Commercial and Trading Company, a European trading firm based in Egypt, in order to become a player in European financial markets. That venture was unsuccessful, and the merger never materialised. In 1894, the Egyptian government ordered the Medjidieh to make a large reduction in expenditure, which they achieved by eliminating some of the destination ports and closing local agencies.[1]
In May 1898, the Egyptian Government sold the fleet of the "Poste Khedivieh Administration", as well as certain ship repair facilities at Suez and Alexandria, to the British merchants Allen, Alderson and Company of Alexandria and Frank Reddaway of Birmingham, acting on behalf of the new British company Khedivial Mail Steamship and Graving Dock Company Limited, established with a capital of £300,000. That fleet consisted of three ships built in 1891–1892 in Scotland and operating on the Alexandria-Piraeus-Constantinople route, as well as eight old ships serving Syrian ports and the Suez-Red Sea services. The new company raised capital to finance the purchase, further fleet renewal and the construction of a new drydock at Alexandria. They received an operating subsidy from the Egyptian Government and undertook to continue the existing mail services, with an exclusive concession for commercial passenger traffic on those routes.
| Ship | O.N. | Launched | Builder | Tonnage (GRT) | Disposal and notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| El Kahira | 110140 | 1892 | Robert Napier & Sons, Govan | 2027 | Passenger-cargo. Sold 1920. Last seen 9 July 1922 west of Les Casquets, heading for Algiers.[2] | |
| Tewfik Rabbani | 110139 | 1891 | Robert Napier & Sons, Govan | 2027 | Passenger-cargo. Sold 1900 to France, renamed La Marsa. 1923 renamed Miliana, 1931 broken up.[3] | |
| Prince Abbas | 110138 | 1891 | Robert Napier & Sons, Govan | 2027 | Passenger-cargo. Sold 1916. Torpedoed 9 July 1917 east of Fair Island.[4] | |
| Dakahlieh | 52728 | 1865 | Money Wigram, Blackwall | 1438 | Passenger-cargo. 1923 broken up | |
| El Rahmanieh | 52697 | 1865 | Richardson Duck and Co, Stockton-on-Tees | 1688 | Cargo | |
| Charkieh | 52687 | 1864 | Thames Iron Works, Blackwall | 1615 | Passenger-cargo. Wrecked 18 September 1900 off Karystos, Greece in a gale | |
| Fayoum | 110137 | 1864 | Samuda Brothers, Cubitt Town | 1642 | Passenger-cargo. 1909 broken up | |
| Mahallah | 50495 | 1864 | Matthew Pearse and Co, Stockton-on-Tees | 1105 | Cargo. 1910 broken up | |
| Chibine | 50170 | 1864 | J Ash & Co., London | 677 | ||
| Missir | 51063 | 1864 | Barclay Curle, Glasgow | 626 | Cargo. Ex-Argyll. 29 May 1918 torpedoed west of Alexandria.[5] | |
| Neghileh | 51065 | 1864 | Barclay Curle, Glasgow | 677 | Cargo. Ex-Moray. Sold 1919, broken up 1923.[6] |
In the first year of operations the company began a programme of upgrading and expanding the fleet as well as restoring services to the full previous range of ports. In addition, due to restrictions under Ottoman law, all the ships were registered under the British flag.[7] In early 1900, within a three days, two of the company's older steamers were lost. The cargo ship Menoufieh was wrecked on 11 March on the Sudan coast, south of Suakin;[8] two days earlier, the passenger steamer Chibine was wrecked in the Gulf of Suez, on a voyage from Jeddah to Suez, carrying over 350 Muslim pilgrims, some Europeans, and the mails. In a subsequent inquiry, the ship was judged to have been unseaworthy, but there was no provision to enforce the Board of Trade's maritime safety regulations applicable to British-registered passenger ships as the company's vessels did not call at British ports.[9] The same year, on 18 September Charkieh was wrecked in Greece, with a loss of 49 lives,[10] which prompted writer and activist Wilfrid Scawen Blunt to take the matter up in The Times.[11]
Also in 1900, construction began on the new graving dock at Alexandria in August.[12]
The company was purchased by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company in 1919 as part of P&O's post-war expansion. It continued to operate and expand, later adopting shipping routes that would bring its ships to the United States.
The company once again changed its name, to the Pharaonic Mail Line, in 1936. It was finally nationalized by the Egyptian government in 1961, forming the United Arab Maritime Company, later the Egyptian Navigation Company.