After the loss of the Formosa trade, the company retained its operations in the China and river trade, however it met with financial difficulties by the late 1920s. In 1932, Stewart Taylor Williamson acquired a controlling stake in the Douglas Steamship Company. With the outbreak of WWII, the company had most of its ships seized by the Ministry of War Transport and with the capture of Hong Kong by the Imperial Japanese Army in December 1941, most of the staff of the DSCo were interred in prison camps in Hong Kong, including Stewart Taylor Williamson. After the war, the company resumed its operations with the two remaining ships that survived the war.