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	Captain '''Harold Keith Salvesen''' {{post-nominals\|country=GBR\|FRZS\|FRSE\|DL}} (30 July 1897 – 1 February 1970) was a British businessman of Norwegian descent, who taught economics at the [[University of Oxford]] before becoming a partner in the family whaling and shipping firm [[Christian Salvesen]].		Captain '''Harold Keith Salvesen''' {{post-nominals\|country=GBR\|FRZS\|FRSE\|DL}} (30 July 1897 – 1 February 1970) was a British businessman of Norwegian descent, who taught economics at the [[University of Oxford]] before becoming a partner in the family whaling and shipping firm [[Christian Salvesen]].

Bot at 17:26, 2 June 2022

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{{Short description|British businessman}}
{{EngvarB|date=July 2022}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2022}}
Captain '''Harold Keith Salvesen''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|FRZS|FRSE|DL}} (30 July 1897 – 1 February 1970) was a British businessman of Norwegian descent, who taught economics at the [[University of Oxford]] before becoming a partner in the family whaling and shipping firm [[Christian Salvesen]].

==Life==

Harold was the son of [[Theodore Salvesen]], who had expanded the family shipping business into [[whaling]] in the late nineteenth century. His mother was Annie Forbes Burnet, one of the earliest women to graduate from the [[University of London]] and sister of the academic [[John Burnet (classicist)|John Burnet]].<ref>Elliot, pp. 10–26</ref> The family lived at 16 [[Inverleith]] Place in north [[Edinburgh]].<ref>Edinburgh Post Office directory 1898</ref> They also owned a country estate at [[Culrain]] in northern Scotland.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Scottish Educational Journal |date=1944 |publisher=Educational Institute of Scotland |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bnwVAAAAIAAJ&q=Harold+Salvesen+estate+at+Culrain |access-date=7 July 2018 |language=en}}</ref> His grandfather [[Christian Salvesen]] had founded the family firm.

From 1903 Harold was educated at [[Edinburgh Academy]]. He left in 1914 at the outbreak of the [[First World War]] to undergo officer training at the [[Royal Military College, Sandhurst]], where he was a prize cadet.<ref name="Herald">{{cite news|newspaper=Glasgow Herald|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19700202&id=kZxAAAAAIBAJ&pg=4072,25195|date=2 February 1970|title=Death of Captain Harold Keith Salvesen}}</ref>

By 1910, the family firm had become the world's leading whaling firm, thanks to a major boom in Antarctic whaling.

On 12 May 1915 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the [[British Indian Army|Indian Army]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/29159/supplement/4540|title=Page 4540 | Supplement 29159, 11 May 1915 | London Gazette | the Gazette}}</ref> and appointed to serve with the [[42nd Deoli Regiment]] in November.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/29588/page/4984|title=Page 4984 | Issue 29588, 19 May 1916 | London Gazette | the Gazette}}</ref> During the First World War, he served in the Middle East, Siberia, and Persia.<ref name="Herald"/> He was twice [[Mentioned in Dispatches]]. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1917 (backdated to May 1916),<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/30236/page/8460|title=Page 8460 | Issue 30236, 17 August 1917 | London Gazette | the Gazette}}</ref> and retired from the Army as a Captain in 1923.<ref name="Herald"/> He continued to use the rank throughout his civilian career, finding it useful in conveying authority in a shipping business.<ref>Elliot, p. 29</ref>

After the war, Salvesen studied [[politics, philosophy and economics]] at [[University College, Oxford]], and in 1923 was appointed a Fellow of [[New College, Oxford|New College]] to teach economics.<ref name="Herald"/> In his four years there, he taught a number of undergraduates who would become prominent Labour politicians, including [[Hugh Gaitskell]], [[Frank Pakenham]], and [[Richard Crossman]], a fact of which he was greatly proud. Salvesen himself was broadly leftwing, declaring himself to be a Labour voter, but was generally distrustful of government and strongly opposed to nationalisation, His nephew, Gerald Elliot, recorded "a faith in entrepreneurial capitalism [and] sympathies for social welfare", and suggested that his dislike of the Conservative government was at least in part a reaction to Conservative politicians who he saw as pompous and imperialist.<ref>Elliot, p. 56</ref> While at Oxford, he took up a one-year fellowship to study at [[Harvard University]] in the United States.<ref name="Herald"/>

In 1934 he was elected a Fellow of the [[Royal Society of Edinburgh]]. His proposers were [[James Young Simpson]], [[Ralph Allen Sampson]], [[James Hartley Ashworth]] and his uncle [[Edward Theodore Salvesen]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002|date=July 2006|publisher=The Royal Society of Edinburgh|isbn=0-902-198-84-X|url=https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp2.pdf|access-date=11 May 2018|archive-date=4 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304074135/https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp2.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In the [[Second World War]] he was Joint Manager for the Whaling Branch Oils and Fat Division of the [[Ministry of Food]]. After the war in 1945 he became Chairman of the family firm [[Christian Salvesen]].

In later life he lived at Inveralmond House near [[Cramond]] in north-west Edinburgh<ref>Cramond Through time, John dods</ref>

He retired in 1967 and died on 1 February 1970.

==Family==

In 1933 he married Marion Eleanora (Mona) Cameron (b.1907) daughter of Admiral [[John Ewen Cameron]] and niece of General [[Archibald Rice Cameron]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.thepeerage.com/p19967.htm|title=Person Page}}</ref>

Their eldest daughter was the gardener Kirsteen (Kirsty) Marion Forbes Salvesen, later Kirsty Maxwell-Stuart.
<ref>Edinburgh Evening News: 23 Jan 2016</ref>

==Whaling==
[[File:Salvestria and Sourabaya.jpg|thumb|right|Factory ships ''Salvestria'' and ''Sourabaya'' at anchor at [[Jersøy|Jarlsø]] in Norway, c. 1930]]
In 1928 Salvesen left Oxford to enter the family business, alongside his brothers Noel and Norman and his cousin Iver. The work was divided among the partners, with Norman responsible for chartering and agency work and Iver handling merchant shipping. Noel, with his father Theodore, headed the whaling division, which Harold joined. After learning Norwegian – the universal language among the whalers – he spent the summers of 1928/29 and 1929/30 in the Antarctic, the first senior manager to actually visit the Southern Ocean whaling fleet, and came back arguing strongly for more investment and more modern practices. He oversaw the conversion of two factory ships for [[pelagic whaling]], ''Salvestria'' and ''Sourabaya'', and brought a new zeal and efficiency to the operations at [[South Georgia Island|South Georgia]] and at sea. The boom in Antarctic whaling came to an abrupt halt in 1930/31, with the price of oil dropping by half, and over the following years Salvesen was a leading player in the negotiations to establish an agreed catch quota among the whaling firms. His major achievement was to set the quota in terms of whales killed rather than oil produced, encouraging a less wasteful approach to whaling.<ref>Elliot, pp. 27–34</ref>

As Harold grew more experienced with the business, he took over the operational aspects of running the fleet while Noel concentrated on selling the oil.<ref>Elliot, p. 46</ref> During the 1930s he reorganised the staffing of the Salvesen fleet to include more British seamen – it had previously been 95% Norwegian – resulting in repeated clashes with the Norwegian seamen's unions, but a growing closeness with the British [[National Union of Seamen]].<ref>Elliot, pp. 36–38</ref> On the outbreak of the Second World War the Salvesen fleet headed south for the Antarctic summer, returning in 1940 to find that their Norwegian home ports were now [[German occupation of Norway|occupied by Germany]]. The following season, after three Norwegian factory ships were [[German auxiliary cruiser Pinguin#Norwegian whaling fleet captured|captured by the commerce raider ''Pinguin'']] the government ordered the suspension of all whaling for the duration of the war, despite Salvensen's protests that whale oil was a valuable food source. The entire British whaling fleet was dispersed, with the factory ships leased to the Ministry of Transport as oil tankers and military transports, and the [[whalecatcher]]s leased to serve as patrol ships and minesweepers. Over the following years Salvesen worked to shepherd this fleet of ships through the [[Battle of the Atlantic]], with great losses; every Salvesen and Unilever factory ship was sunk, along with two of the large modern Norwegian factory ships.<ref>Elliot, pp. 46–48</ref>

==Publications==

*''Modern Aspects of Whaling'' (1932)

==References==
{{reflist|30em}}

* {{cite book|last1=Elliot|first1=Gerald|title=A whaling enterprise : Salvesen in the Antarctic|date=1998|publisher=Michael Russell|location=Wilby, Norwich|isbn=0859552411}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Salvesen, Harold}}
[[Category:1897 births]]
[[Category:1970 deaths]]
[[Category:British businesspeople in shipping]]
[[Category:British Indian Army officers]]
[[Category:Fellows of New College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Alumni of University College, Oxford]]
[[Category:People educated at Edinburgh Academy]]
[[Category:Scottish people of Norwegian descent]]
[[Category:Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst]]
[[Category:Harvard University alumni]]
[[Category:British people in whaling]]

Harold Salvesen - Revision history

Bot at 17:26, 2 June 2022

Bot at 17:26, 2 June 2022