#15457, Charles ROBIN

Jersey pioneer in Gaspé. Charles Robin assisted as a boy in his parents' chandlery shop in St Aubin. Chandlery stores were to become a major part of his later business model. He went to the Canadian coast in 1766, initially to work as an agent for his brother`s firm at Cape Breton Island. He adopted from the start, when dealing with indigenous, non-Jersey, fishermen, the `truck system of credit` used for generations by the Hudson Bay Company in its dealings with Indian fur trappers. This involved bringing in to remote areas, far from shops and banks, items such as clothing, sea boots and groceries, as well as general chandlery items. These were made available, not for cash, which was in short supply in these regions, but against the cost of the fish that would be caught by the men in the forthcoming season. The fishermen were likely to begin each season in debt to the company, working part of the summer merely to clear their accounts. This worked well for the merchants, who decided the cost of items in their stores, as well as valuing the fish caught, when presented to them for purchase. There were usually few competitors and nowhere else for the fishermen to shop. Charles Robin expanded the business northwards, towards Baie des Chaleurs, in Gaspé, establishing numerous fishing stations, or posts, as they were called in Canada, most of them with similar stores. In 1783 he founded his own firm, incorporating much of the territory in which he had previously set up posts, and employing, for the first time, a shipwright to construct and repair vessels. In 1800, he owned four vessels and in 1820, seven. In the following years the fleet doubled in size, despite the founder having died unmarried in 1824, as he had as successors two of his three nephews. In 1874, the fleet consisted of 29 vessels, operating from numerous posts and trading worldwide. The fleet reached the pinnacle of expansion in 1882, when 33 ships were owned. Early rivals, the Janvrins, had retired from the fisheries and ship owning in 1842, and later rivals, Philip Nicolle and Company, had largely withdrawn from Newfoundland, where their interests lay, in 1863. Charles Robin`s successors then took over, in 1879, Jersey`s Commercial Bank, thus following a time-honoured path from shipping to banking. The Robin firm survived the Jersey bank crashes of 1886 [see Abraham_de_Gruchy's_successors] by means of a merger with another Jersey firm, J and E Collas, and was trading well into the 20th century.