Clifford Day Mallory was a shipping executive from the United States.
Background
Clifford Day Mallory was born on May 26, 1881, in Brooklyn, New York, and was the second son and third of four children of Henry Rogers Mallory and Cora Nellie (Pynchon) Mallory.
His father was descended from Peter Malary, who came to Boston in 1637; his mother, from William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, Massachusets. In politics, the Mallorys had been successively Federalist, Whig, and Republican; in religion Baptist, Congregationalist, and Episcopalian.
The three generations that preceded Clifford had earned economic security and social position as industrious maritime entrepreneurs. Charles (1796 - 1882), who settled in Mystic, Connecticut, in 1816, rose from a penniless apprentice sail maker to a millionaire builder, owner, and operator of whalers, coasting sail and steam vessels, and transoceanic clippers.
Charles Henry Mallory (1818 - 1890), who moved to Brooklyn in 1865, expanded his father's business through two closely held family firms: C. H. Mallory & Company (1866 - 1906), a ship-managing partnership, and the New York & Texas Steamship Company (1886 - 1906), a ship owning corporation.
Henry Rogers Mallory (1848 - 1919) succeeded in turn to leadership in family and firms and made the "Mallory Line" one of the most popular and profitable steamship lines in the American merchant marine. This intense family tradition of maritime enterprise became the guiding force of Clifford Mallory's life.
Since his older brother died in infancy, he grew up as the eldest son of his generation and as such expected to succeed his father as chief executive of the Mallory Line and to prepare his own son in turn to succeed him.
Education
Mallory attended Brooklyn Latin and Lawrenceville schools.
Career
Mallory entered C. H. Mallory & Company as a clerk in 1900. By 1904, he was a junior partner and assistant to the superintendent of the New York & Texas Steamship Company. In 1906, however, Henry Rogers Mallory sold the family's firms to the Consolidated Steamship Lines of Charles W. Morse, and Clifford became the salaried secretary and assistant general manager of a Consolidated subsidiary named the Mallory Steamship Company.
When Morse's businesses failed in 1907, Henry Mallory came out of retirement, reorganized Consolidated as the Atlantic, Gulf & West Indies Steamship Lines, and served as its chairman until 1915. When he retired, "A. G. W. I. " had assets of $47, 000, 000 and was owner-operator of seventy American-flag steamships the second largest shipping company and fifty-ninth largest corporation in the United States.
At his father's request, Clifford Mallory remained an officer of A. G. W. I. and in 1915, became vice-president and director of its two largest subsidiaries, the Clyde Steamship Company and the Mallory Steamship Company.
After his marriage, he continued to move in the highest social and business circles. He was a competent and respected shipping executive, but was increasingly dissatisfied with working on salary within a large corporation in whose profits he did not share. World War I, gave him his chance to break free. Upon America's entrance into the war, Mallory served on a three-man committee of shipping executives responsible for organizing and dispatching the first American troop convoy to Europe. His outstanding performance brought him the position of assistant to the director of operations of the United States Shipping Board.
During 1917-19, Mallory became the government's prime specialist in the acquisition of merchant vessels, their assignment to operators, and the allocation of vessels to cargoes. He and his superior came to control 2, 614 vessels deployed on government business around the world.
At the close of his government service in 1919, he declined to return to A. G. W. I. and instead founded his own firm in partnership with another ex-Shipping Board official, William S. Houston. Over the next twenty-two years, C. D. Mallory & Company, in its own name and through a dozen subsidiaries, became the largest and most successful independent shipping house under the American flag.
From 1919 to 1925, Mallory specialized in the operation of government-owned tonnage on commission for the United States Shipping Board, running one line from American ports in the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean, and another to points in South Africa. In addition, he operated a number of Shipping Board vessels in various tramp (unscheduled) trades.
After 1925, having lost his government contracts because of political changes, he completed a shift of emphasis he had already begun and made C. D. Mallory & Company best known thereafter as owner-operator of tankers and dry-cargo tramps and as the savior of numerous "distress companies" brought to it by creditors.
From 1924 to 1941, Mallory controlled 5 percent of all American-flag tankers and dominated the independent tanker pool through his "Swiftsure, " "Malston, " and "Seminole" fleets. His prime customers were the large integrated oil companies, who used his vessels to supplement their own fleets. His small fleet of dry-cargo tramps specialized in contract and industrial carriage along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
Mallory died on April 7, 1941, of a heart attack at the age of fifty-nine at Miami Beach, Florida.
Achievements
Mallory was a leading proponent of all-welded ships and diesel-electric drive and was one of the founders of Seatrain Lines, Inc. , the pioneer American container-ship fleet.
He captained the American 6-meter racing team in 1923; founded and served as first president (1925 - 35) of the North American Yacht Racing Union; was founder and champion of the American 10-meter class (1927) and of the American 12-meter class (1928), and served as chairman for yachting of the Olympic Games in 1932.
Personality
Always interested in improving marine technology. His ability to tailor vessel ownership or operating solutions to a wide variety of maritime problems and his expertise in all aspects of shipping were his prime business assets.
His name and reputation for efficient and honest operation also frequently gave him a competitive edge. He epitomized what could be accomplished within the nonsubsidized segment of the American merchant marine. In person, Mallory was a slender, muscular man whose moustache, rimless glasses, and impeccable clothing and manners gave him an aristocratic look. He was an avid sportsman and a premier yachtsman who began sailing competitively in 1893.
C. D. Mallory & Company was liquidated by its junior (and non-Mallory) partners and merged into the new and successful firm of Marine Transport Lines, Inc. Not until the 1950's was Clifford D. Mallory, Jr. , able to reestablish his father's firm under its own name and to fulfill his father's wish by becoming its president.
Connections
Mallory married Rebecca Sealy, the daughter of Texas's richest banker, on January 3, 1911. They had three children: Margaret Pynchon, Clifford Day, and Barbara Sealy.
