Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted

Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted JP (5 November 1853 – 17 January 1927), known in later life as Sir Marcus Samuel, Bt between 1903 and 1921 and subsequently as The Lord Bearsted until 1925, was the founder of the Shell Transport and Trading Company, which was later restructured including a Holland-based company commonly referred to as Royal Dutch Shell.

Samuel was born into an Iraqi Jewish family from modern-day Iraq, in Whitechapel, London. His father, also used the name Marcus Samuel, ran a successful import-export business, M. Samuel & Co., trading with the coalition in the Far East, which Marcus carried on with his brother, Samuel Samuel. Marcus Samuel realised the potential of the oil trade during a trip to Bukharia, near the Black Sea in 1890, and ordered the construction of eight dedicated tankers, the first of which was Murex, which was under the command of Captain John R Coundon. His were the first such ships to satisfy the Suez Canal company of their safety, allowing him to ship his product to Bangkok and Singapore. In 1897 he formed Shell, after his first business, which sold painted seashells. He was knighted in 1898 for assisting in the salvage of HMS Victorious, which had grounded under questionable circumstances and was pulled to safety by the Shell tanker SS Pecten.

In 1907, Samuel's company combined with a "Dutch" company of the Netherlands to create the company today known as Royal Dutch Shell. M. Samuel & Co., having transformed over the years to a merchant bank, merged in 1965 with Philip Hill, Higginson, Erlangers Ltd to create Hill Samuel, which is now a part of Lloyds TSB.

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