Samuel Enderby & Sons

Samuel Enderby & Sons was a whaling and sealing company based in London, England, founded circa 1775 by Samuel Enderby (1717–1797). The company encouraged their captains to combine exploration with their business activities, and sponsored several of the earliest expeditions to the subantarctic, Southern Ocean and Antarctica itself.

Enderby had acquired at least one ship, Almsbury, c. 1768, renamed Rockingham, that he used as a trader. In 1773 Enderby began the Southern Fishery, a whaling firm with ships registered in London and Boston. All of the captains and harpooners were American loyalists. The vessels transported finished goods to the American colonies, and brought whale oil ′from New England to England. Some of Enderby's ships were reportedly chartered for the tea cargoes that were ultimately dumped into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party incident.

An embargo was placed on whale oil exports from New England in 1775, as a result of the American War of Independence. Enderby therefore elected to pursue the whaling trade in the South Atlantic. Rockingham embarked on her first whale fishing voyage on 11 November 1775 when Captain Elihu L. Clark sailed her from Britain for the Brazil Banks.

Samuel Enderby founded the Samuel Enderby & Sons company the following year. He and his business partners Alexander Champion and John St Barbe assembled a fleet of twelve whaling vessels on the Greenwich Peninsula, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich.

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