"Shell" Transport and Trading Company of the United Kingdom

The Anglo Saxon Petroleum Company was a branch of the “Shell” Transport and Trading Company. Shell was a British company founded by Marcus Samuel and Samuel Samuel in 1897.

The brothers’ father Marcus Samuel was an enterprising fellow who decided to greet ships returning to England from India, Japan, Africa, and the Middle East and offer to buy any trinkets and curious that sailors had collected abroad.

In 1833 Marcus opened a small shop in London, selling sea shells to Victorian natural history enthusiasts. It soon became a thriving import-export business: Marcus Samuel & Company that traded with the Far East The brothers carried on with the import-export with Marcus establishing “Shell” Transport and Trading Company to import sea shells for sale to collectors in London and Samuel, in partnership with his brother, later founding Samuel Samuel & Co in Yokohama, Japan.

While on a trip to the Black Sea to collect shells in 1890, Marcus realized the business potential for shipping oil and founded the shipping company after his return to England. He commissioned the first special oil tanker in 1892 named Murex and subsequently delivered 4000 tones of Russian kerosene to Singapore and Bangkok, under the trade mark ‘Shell’.

In 1897 The “Shell” Transport and Trading Company Ltd was formed, and in 1904 they adopted the scallop shell as their logo. In 1907, Sir Marcus Samuel and Henri Deterding merged the Shall Transport and Trading Company with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company to create Royal Dutch/Shell.
"Shell" Transport and Trading Company of the United Kingdom