Why it is on record
Founded by Macgregor Laird under a Royal Mail contract; the first steamship line to operate scheduled services to the Bights of Benin and Biafra. Carried Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther's 1854 Niger Expedition.
Record held
First scheduled steamship link between Europe and what became Nigeria.
Deep dive
The African Steam Ship Company, founded in London in 1852 by Macgregor Laird, inaugurated the first regular steam-mail service between Britain and the West African coast — including Lagos — and was the proximate enabling infrastructure for the British commercial and consular presence in the Bight of Biafra in the 1850s. Its absorption into the Elder Dempster combine in 1891 consolidated the Liverpool-controlled West African shipping monopoly that dominated the colonial trade.