The history of SHELL

The founder of the SHELL brand is considered to be the British entrepreneur Marcus Samuel, who opened his own shop in London in 1833. The shop sold all sorts of exotic trinkets, among them objects (boxes) decorated with, or made from, seashells. That's exactly where the company's logo and name came from (shell being the English word for these). Up until 1904, Shell's logo was a mussel shell; from 1904 to the present day, it has been a scallop shell, though the logo itself has changed little.

For this business, the Samuels (Marcus senior had two sons, who later took charge of the export-import side) had to set up the supply of goods from abroad. Gradually, the transport side of things grew into a separate, successful business of its own.

In 1891, one of Samuel's sons was on business in Batumi (today in Georgia), where by that time kerosene production from Caspian oil was already well established. Given how fast engine building was developing (the first car with an internal combustion engine appeared in 1886) and the acute fuel shortage in the Far East, Samuel decided to ship kerosene by sea.

That's how the world's first tanker, the "Murex," came about, making its first commercial voyage in 1892. This was something of a revolution in the transport of oil products, since in its very first voyage the "Murex" carried 4,000 tonnes of kerosene to Bangkok and Singapore. As early as 1897, Marcus junior (one of the brothers) registered a separate company, The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company Ltd, whose main line of business was the transnational trade in oil and kerosene.

The next key stage in the company's development was the creation of the new group Royal Dutch Shell, 40% of which belonged to the Samuels, and 60% to the oil-production company Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, which was developing oil fields in Sumatra and the West Indies.

In fact, the company existed in this organisational form until 2005, when a joint decision was made to merge the parent companies (The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company Ltd and Royal Dutch Petroleum Company) into one, headquartered in The Hague (Netherlands).

More on this (click the heading to read the fuller information):