Edward Knight Collins

Edward Knight Collins I (5 August 1802 – 22 January 1878) was an American shipping magnate.

Early life

He was born on August 5, 1802, in Truro, Massachusetts, to Israel Gross Collins (1776–1831) and Mary Ann Knight (c. 1780 – Jan 3, 1803). His mother was a niece of Sir Edward Knight and she died shortly after Edward was born. His aunts then raised him. His father moved to New York City. At age thirteen in 1815, Collins left Truro for New Jersey to attend school. He then went to New York City as an apprentice clerk in the counting house of McCrea and Slidell. Within a few years, Edward moved to Delaplaine and Company. He received a government subsidy in 1847 to carry mail on that same route, for which purpose he formed the New York and Liverpool United States Mail Steamship Company (the "Collins Line") to compete with Britain's Cunard Line. The new Line's inaugural voyage took place in April 1850, and for the next six years its steamships were the biggest, fastest and most luxurious on the Atlantic. They were hugely expensive to operate, however, and in 1852 Collins was forced to go back to Congress to secure a major increase in his subsidy for carrying mail. This left him in a very vulnerable position when the increase was canceled in 1856 after two of the Line's four steamships sank: the Arctic had sunk in 1854 while carrying his wife and two of his children., and less than two years later the Pacific disappeared without a trace on her way back from Liverpool to New York. The Collins Line struggled on for another couple of years, using the insurance payouts for its two lost ships to build an even bigger steamer called the Adriatic. But after its subsidy was reduced it simply could not make ends meet, and in February 1858 the Line finally folded. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx.