Fixed Asset Accounting in the Shipping Industry: P&O 1840–1914

Abstract

The Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) was one of the most important British shipping companies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The extensive P&O archives reveal the evolution of the company's methods of accounting for its fleet of merchant ships, from an initial arbitrary depreciation reserve fund, through relatively systematic application of the reducing balance method, to a rigid adherence to straight line depreciation. P&O saw depreciation largely as a source of internally generated funds for asset replacement, and secondarily as a means of dividend smoothing. The latter objective was also achieved through the use of a secret reserve. P&O's accounting methods were rarely innovative, but taken together they epitomize the ‘best’ accounting practices of their day.