The Santa Line

XCII

Pan American and W.R. Grace both held a 50% stake in Pan American-Grace Airways. Since it was a subsidiary airline, Pan Am began calling itself a "system" of routes. The establishment of Panagra led Pan Am to establish other subsidiary carriers. Often, a passenger didn't even know, until they saw their ticket, that they were booked on a PAA System airline

Panagra had several logos over the years. The green, gold and white of Ireland are the Grace colors

One of Pan American’s earliest South American co-ventures was with W.R. Grace & Company.  W.R. Grace & Company had been founded by an Irish immigrant to Peru, William R. Grace, who fled the Potato Famine in 1845. Eventually Grace found himself working in a ships’ chandlery in Callao, one of Peru’s major ports. After learning Spanish and learning the chandlery business, Grace opened his own chandlery in 1848. 

W.R. Grace and Company started out in sailing ships, just as Juan Trippe's family did, and at about the same time

During World War II many Grace Line merchantmen were sunk by Nazi U-boats doing convoy duty. This poster remembers them

 

The Grace family are devout Catholics to this day. All of their ships had Spanish names (reflecting the company's Peruvian origins) and all were named for saints (reflecting their religious scruples). As a result, the Grace Line was often called the "Santa Line"

It was a fortuitous moment to open a business. Gold had just been discovered in California, and in a matter of weeks the California Gold Rush was on. Callao became a recoaling and refitting stop for virtually every ship that rounded the Horn to go to the gold fields. 

An early Panagra Trimotor. Pan Am named all Panagra planes in accordance with their custom, but named them all after Spanish saints in keeping with Grace custom. This ship is the San Felipe

Although William Grace was becoming well-to-do thanks to the Gold Rush, he was wise enough to know that it could not last forever. In association with two of his brothers who had emigrated to the United States, one in New York and one in San Francisco, he began marketing commodities like guano and sugar. W.R. Grace & Company, with offices in New York, was established just after the Civil War, and prospered.

During World War II, many of Pan Am's international routes were disrupted but Panagra kept flying. Note the fighter planes in the background.

To cut costs, the Graces partnered with the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A & P Steamship Lines) to move its cargo. They also began building their own ships in 1882. W.R. Grace & Company became vastly diversified, owning its own bank at one time as well as several shipping lines (currently, they are predominantly into the manufacturing of chemicals).  

A Panagra DC-7B. Panagra used only propeller planes until 1967

In 1926, Grace bid on and received the 7,100 mile long U.S. air mail route running from Panama to Tierra Del Fuego on the western coast of South America.  It was, at that time, the longest airmail route in the world, and possibly the wildest, flying, as it did, over the high, rugged, and essentially unmapped Andes Mountains.

A DC-7B on the ground at Miami. This Panagra was named, in a break with custom, El Inter-Americano, which was also the name of Panagra's main route

Grace, however, had no planes capable of handling the route. The company, a seagoing concern, was also chary of airlines. They were also hard set against Juan Trippe’s blandishments to sell the route to Pan American. Trippe was an old family friend, who they did not entirely trust. They had, with some bemusement, watched him swallow up NYRBA and two score smaller air companies. There was calculated talk in Grace circles of acquiring Pan Am. Some of it reached Trippe’s ears, and it made him cautious. 

In 1967, Panagra bought its first jets, DC-8s. The company closed its doors the next year. Panagra flies again today, but only as a brand. The existing airline has neither Pan American nor Grace lineage

Juan Trippe badly wanted the route, called FAM 9, but he knew that the infant Pan American could not take the route away from the powerful and long-established Graces. He particularly wanted air service to Buenos Aires, “The Paris of South America.” The reality was that the Grace route was absolutely critical to any real plan to have air service to Buenos Aires. The NYRBA route, down the east coast of South America, was long and winding with many stops, high fuel consumption and high costs. The Grace route, with its locus in Santiago, Chile, could be linked to one of Pan Am’s smaller routes and extended across the breadth of South America to the Argentinian capital.  

El Inter-Americano, Grace's main line, and the FAM 9 that Juan Trippe wanted so desperately, is marked in red in this 1950s brochure

Instead of battling W.R. Grace and Company, Juan Trippe became their partner in 1928, when they jointly founded Pan American-Grace Airways (always called Panagra thereafter). It would be a successful forty year partnership, and one of the most profitable routes in the world.

 

W.R. Grace and Company commissioned a headquarters building in New York City that opened in 1971. Its curvilinear design makes it unique. Grace moved out of the building in the mid-1980s (though they still own it), and relocated, first to Boca Raton, Florida and then to Columbia, Maryland