From humble beginnings as a runaway English sailor on the Tamar River in 1854, William Holyman became a master mariner and owner of small coastal craft trading between Launceston and Tasmania’s NW Coast. Cooperation between extended family members saw the development of a sailing fleet that from 1890 began a slow transition to coastal and interstate steam. By 1902 this drew the ire of powerful monopoly interests: Huddart Parker & Co. of Melbourne and the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand. Intense competition failed to break the Holyman family, and in 1904 the three protagonists combined to form the interstate shipping line Willliam Holyman & Sons Pty Ltd. The Holyman family managed the joint assets to the satisfaction of all, and this put the third generation Tasmanian Holymans, especially Ivan Holyman, in a position to attract other partners to form Australia’s largest commercial airline Australian National Airways in 1936. A model of collaboration and the deliberate collusion with potential competitors allowed the Holyman family to control a far greater empire than its own resources could have allowed. Reaching its peak in the late 1950s, the presentation will conclude with the problems with new competitors, competing needs of the constituent partners and corporate takeovers that would bring about the end of the Holyman empire.
A scientist by education, Graeme Broxam recently retired from a career in Intellectual Property to concentrate on his joint obsessions with preserving maritime history and historical research and publishing. A Life Member of the Maritime Museum of Tasmania, he is currently Secretary of the Wooden Boat Guild of Tasmania. His Navarine Publishing has made a significant contribution to publicising Australian maritime history for over thirty years, and this presentation draws on a forthcoming book By Sea and Air: The Holyman Fleets due out later this year. This is Graeme's third presentation to THRA, the previous talk in 2021 John Scott: Sealer of Bass Strait and his Tasmanian Aboriginal Dependants also drawing on research for a forthcoming book, The Straitsfolk.