page_title: Anchor Line (steamship company)
section_title: Decline and fate
hierarchical_section_title: Anchor Line (steamship company) / Decline and fate
caption_attribution_description: English: Anchor Line building, St Vincent Place, Glasgow, by James Miller (1905-7)
context_page_description: Anchor Line was a Scottish merchant shipping company that was founded in 1855 and dissolved in 1980.
context_section_description: Shipping magnate Lord Runciman saved the company, letting it retain its identity.
  In the Second World War the Admiralty requisitioned Cameronia and Transylvania as armed merchant cruisers. On 10 August 1940 German submarine U-56 (1938) torpedoed and sank Transylvania in the North Atlantic off Malin Head, killing 36 members of her complement.
  After the war Anchor Line struggled once again to change with the times. Its core markets gradually disappeared with the expansion of air transport. The company restructured several times to try and stay abreast of events but the last Anchor line ships were finally withdrawn from service in 1980 and the company was no more. At its height however, Anchor Line was well renowned and vitally important to Glasgow. In a company history written in 1932 it was observed that:
  "They give employment to hundreds of dockers, loading and discharging. Each ship carries between four and five hundred crew, nearly all belonging to or resident around Clydeside. The money circulated for stores and other trade accounts runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds in the year. The welfare of some thousands of people depends on the ships."
  Patrick Dollan, Provost of Glasgow summed the feeling up in an article:
  "Every Scot thrills with pride and memories of the adventure and enjoyment of travel on hearing of the Anchor Line. When I was a boy it was the ambition of every youngster to sail across the Atlantic on an Anchor Liner..."
caption: Anchor's headquarters building in St Vincent Place, Glasgow, designed by James Miller and completed in 1907
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