Public Limited Company. The Compañía Marítima del Nervión was set up in Bilbao on 16 May 1907, as a result of the merger of the Compañía Anónima de Navegación with the steamships of the former Compañía Bilbaína de Navegación. Its promoters were two people from Algorta, the merchant captain Francisco Aldecoa Uriarte and the merchant and financier Tomás Urquijo y Aguirre, who jointly managed the company for life. The Aldecoa and Urquijo families (supported until the early seventies by the Banco de Vizcaya) controlled the ownership and management of this company until its bankruptcy in 1986.
Originally, the company used its fleet (nine steamers with 20,000 gross tonnage, which placed it among the ten largest Spanish shipping companies, a position it held until the early 1960s) in free international traffic, transporting bulk cargo (coal, ore, wood, cotton) and general cargo. From 1919, it started a regular line the main ports of the Gulf of Mexico and Spain, shipping cotton and general cargo in the United States to Barcelona and Bilbao, whose competition was regulated by a conference of which other North American and European shipping companies were members. With few changes, this liner service became the main market for the company's ships until its definitive suspension in 1974. Throughout this period, Marítima was one of the few Spanish shipping companies operating regular transatlantic services (along with Aznar, Ybarra and Trasatlántica). It was also one of the companies that made an early commitment to the new diesel engine technology in shipping and its ships enjoyed a proven reputation among seafarers, shippers and insurers.
After the death of the founders (Urquijo in 1937 and Aldecoa six years later) a second generation, led by the latter's son, Honorio Francisco Aldecoa Berasaluce (1943-1972), took over the company. Under the presidency and management of Honorio Francisco Aldecoa, the company resumed the line service in 1947 (suspended after the outbreak of the Civil War) and, from the mid-1950s onwards, undertook the process of renewing its fleet. Until the mid-1960s, the regular line was a buoyant business for the company, benefiting from the strong growth in imports from the USA from the early 1950s, initially due to American aid; and from the fact that the main products transported - cotton and wood, above all - were characterised as State trade, which meant that half of the shipments were reserved for the Spanish flag - represented on the line by Marítima del Nervión. From the mid-1960s, however, the company had to face an increasingly difficult scenario: the transition from cotton to general cargo (which made it necessary to look for new cargoes, also in the direction of the USA, to compensate for the drop in shipments), to compensate for the decline in shipments), rising stevedoring and unstowage costs in the Gulf ports and increasing competition from outsiders (non-conference vessels which occasionally take a share of the shipments at lower prices), from other companies wishing to enter the line, such as Transatlantica, and from other operators with new types of vessel, the container ship.
The company's poor results and its difficult financial situation in the early 1970s led to the emergence of tensions the different owner families and ended up accelerating a generational changeover in the governing and management bodies that had begun in the middle of the previous decade. In February 1973, Honorio Francisco Aldecoa resigned from his posts as chairman and manager of the company, giving way to a third generation led by several of his nephews (from the Solano, Villa and Garamendi Aldecoa families, to whom he sold his stake in the company), and in which the descendants of the Urquijo family (Fernández-Valdés and Zavala families) were also represented, albeit with a much smaller percentage. This third generation, led by Eugenio Solano Aldecoa (managing director), Ignacio Villa Aldecoa (secretary of the board of directors) and Rafael Garamendi Aldecoa (chairman of the company from 1977 onwards) controlled the running of the company until its bankruptcy and disappearance in 1986.
At first, the third generation tried to maintain the strategy followed by the company since the early 1970s, keeping the regular line operational with the older vessels and managing to transport new cargoes for the United States to alleviate the drop in shipments in the Gulf ports; and chartering its newest vessel on a long-term basis to obtain a regular and stable income. However, declining shipments due to the international economic crisis and increasing competition from foreign carriers and container ships forced the company to suspend its regular service in the autumn of 1976. The management tried, with little success, to find employment for the vessels serving the line, being forced first to moor them in the summer of 1977 and then to sell them for scrap. From then on, the company's strategy was to renew its fleet by taking advantage of the support measures dictated by the State (such as the million tonne tender of 1976). In 1976 it contracted Bazán to build two multipurpose cargo ships which, for various reasons, did not enter service until the end of 1979, leased on a long-term basis to other shipping lines. The company ordered two more vessels of similar characteristics from Bazán in 1977, but only one was completed, and in another factory (Astilleros Españoles in Seville), and entered service in 1984.
The fragile financial situation of Marítima del Nervión placed the company in the hands of its creditors, in this case the public banks, which at the end of 1984 controlled 94 percent of the naval credit granted in Spain. The market situation - characterised by overcapacity and strong competition - and debt management problems did the rest. Negotiations with the State and public banks to obtain moratoriums were continuous during these last years, but Marítima del Nervión, like other shipping companies, was not very successful. Finally, on 1 October 1985, the Banco de Crédito Industrial ordered the seizure of all the company's ships, which, once captured, were managed by the Sociedad de Gestión de Buques, which ended up selling them in 1989 to pay off the debts the company had contracted with the State.