James Edward Ward was born in New York City, the son of James Otis and Martha T. (Dame) Ward, and a descendant of William Ward who settled in Sudbury, Massachussets, about 1638. James Otis Ward had moved from his father's farm near Roxbury, Massachussets, to New York City, where he became a ship chandler on South Street and soon acquired an interest in numerous sailing vessels, thus beginning the long association of the family name with the Cuban trade. He died in 1855, and the following year the business was reorganized in his son's name, as James E. Ward & Company, with Henry P. Booth and Samuel C. Shepherd as silent partners.
Career
Ward soon turned over the chandlery business to his younger brother, George Edgar Ward, and the firm, with its offices and piers at the foot of Wall Street on East River, devoted itself to shipping. By 1875, it owned some forty sailing vessels and occasionally also chartered steamers for the Cuban trade. Some of the Ward vessels ran with sufficient regularity to be termed packets, but the principal business was general freighting to Cuba similar to that later developed by Walter D. Munson. The chief freight from New York consisted of flour, potatoes, pork products, papers, hardware, and machinery, while the return cargoes, in addition to the all-important sugar, included tobacco and fruit. The celebrated Ward Line really dates from 1877, when the firm instituted direct passenger and mail service to Havana. Their chief competitors at this time were the lines of Francis Alexandre & Sons and William P. Clyde & Sons, but the latter group soon restricted its activity to the coastal trade. Ward and his associates, in beginning the new enterprise, sold their sailing vessels to pay for the Niagara and the Saratoga, iron steamships of about 2, 300 tons, built for them by John Roach at Chester, Pa. , and rated as the finest then under the American flag. The Saratoga was subsequently sold to Russia for use as a cruiser and Roach built a second vessel of that name in 1878. Continued additions gave the Ward Line the heaviest tonnage among American lines in foreign service. In 1881 it was incorporated, with a capital of $2, 300, 000, as the New York & Cuba Mail Steamship Company. Booth was president, W. H. T. Hughes secretary-treasurer, and Ward apparently chairman of the board and guiding spirit. Serious competition developed in the later eighties. Henry B. Plant in 1886 connected Havana with the new railroad to Tampa by a small, fast steamer which secured a mail contract worth $58, 000 a year, leaving the Ward Line barely $1, 300. Shortly afterwards, the Compañía Transatlantica Española, backed by a heavy Spanish subsidy, entered the New York-Havana run. This was apparently too much for the Alexandre line, which went out of business in 1888, selling a number of steamships to the Ward Line, which also took over its Mexican service to Progreso, Tampico, and Vera Cruz. The new competition resulted in the reduction of freight rates from $5 to $1. 60 a ton and first-class passenger rates from $60 to as little as $35, and forced the Ward Line to omit dividends for two years. Ward claimed and gained considerable credit for keeping the American flag afloat in the merchant marine when he could have operated more cheaply with foreign bottoms. He was a strong supporter of the American Shipping and Industrial League, formed to lobby for merchant-marine relief, and the Ward Line, represented by Hughes, was prominent in the hearings which led to the Postal Aid Act, approved March 3, 1891. Under this act the Ward Line received a subsidy of one dollar a mile, or about $200, 000 a year. At Ward's death in 1894 his line had ten iron or steel ships with a total tonnage of about 30, 000. In 1907, it was the largest of the six companies combined in the short-lived holding company of Charles W. Morse, and upon Morse's failure, it was combined in 1908 with the Mallory, Clyde and Porto Rico lines in another holding company headed by Henry R. Mallory, but it retained its autonomous identity. Ward died of Bright's disease, at his summer home at Great Neck, L. I, after an illness of several months.
Personality
His portrait indicates a certain resemblance to Grover Cleveland, with a solid build, black moustache, and a frank, keen expression of the eyes behind rimmed spectacles.
Connections
Ward had married, October 1, 1857, Harriet A. Morrill, who died in 1885. Of their three children only one daughter reached maturity.
