Samuel Cunard

Samuel Cunard, born in Halifax on the 21st of November 1787, was an extremely successful merchant, shipowner and entrepreneur during the 1800s. Cunard started his business career in 1811 as a clerk for the Royal Engineers. He secured this position through his father Abraham who, due to the success of his timber business, had many acquaintance in the military (http://www.biographi.ca/ pararaph 5). Samuel was quickly promoted to first clerk at the engineers’ lumber-yard where he gained valuable experience working as a draftsman until 1812, when his father founded the firm A. Cunard and Son (http://search.proquest.com/ paragraph 11). The firm began work in the timber industry, but soon became active in the West Indian trade, through the imports

Regardless of these obstacles, Samuel Cunard was able to diversify his business and successfully establish himself as an entrepreneur due to factors such as; efficient management practices, innovative technology, vision, and hard work. Although there were many factors that played a role in Samuel Cunard’s success, it was his desire to expand his enterprise that truly enabled him to successfully establish and manage his business in Canada for over half a century. Cunard turned his father's fairly small firm, A. Cunard and Son, into a business empire by expanding into the trade, mining, shipbuilding and the mail

S. Cunard & Company thrived for over half a century until Samuel's death in 1865, which is quite an impressive feat for a company at the time. Again, Samuel was successful in managing his business due to his desire to expand and diversify the firm. While other companies in Halifax were suffering as a result of the economic depression in Nova Scotia, Cunard used the depression to his advantage. He secured the contract to provide wharf space in Halifax for the General Mining Association over the the long-established firm that the contract was originally intended for, Belcher, Binney, and Company (http://www.biographi.ca/ paragraph 39). After securing this contract Cunard’s reduced GMA’s debt to the bank of Nova Scotia from £25,480 to £10,000, another example of his success in managing a business in Canada. This successful business management led to an expansion in his business practices in 1839, when Cunard’s Halifax firm was awarded the contract to supply coal to the Halifax Dockyard (http://www.biographi.ca/ paragraph 40). With that being said, Cunard’s most significant management success occurred in 1839 when, “he submitted a bid to the British government to undertake a regular mail service by steamship across the North Atlantic from Liverpool to Halifax, Québec and Boston, for £55 000 annually for 10 years”