Bernard N. Baker

Bernard Nadal Baker (11 May 1854 – 20 December 1918) was a shipping magnate from Baltimore, Maryland.

Baker descended from generations of wealthy Baltimore merchants and glass manufacturers. He studied in Philadelphia with the geologist and chemist Frederick Genth and was a special student at Yale College. In the 1880 Census Baker identified himself as a glass manufacturer, but he had also founded three businesses supplying coal, tugs, and lighters and cold storage facilities in Baltimore harbor. Although the U.S. mercantile marine had been declining for decades in the face of British competition and high domestic operating costs, Baker’s ambition was to build a major American owned transatlantic steamship line in Baltimore. In 1881, with the support of the Pennsylvania Railroad (which wanted a transatlantic outlet for its freight business) Baker established the Atlantic Transport Line (A.T.L.). Shipping freight and livestock from Baltimore and Philadelphia, Baker quickly became the second-largest American steamship operator. In 1892 he initiated the exclusively first class direct London to New York passenger service for which the A.T.L. became famous.

Baker’s move to sell the line to his principal British competitor in the late 1890s led to the creation of J Pierpont Morgan's colossal International Mercantile Marine Company (IMM) in 1902 through the merger of the A.T.L. and six other companies.

Baker effectively retired from the shipping business when the IMM was formed and lost much of his fortune when the IMM shares for which he exchanged his A.T.L. shares plummeted in value. But he had gained an international reputation as an authority on shipping and was consulted by the U.S. Government on the Panama Canal and was one of four experts appointed for a National Sub-Committee on Transportation Problems. He supplied much of the data for the contentious shipping bill in 1915, and having been one of the moving spirits in its creation, he was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson as one of the five members of the United States Shipping Board during World War I.

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