Sandbach, Tinne & Company

Sandbach, Tinne & Company, together with its associate firms McInroy, Parker & Company and McInroy, Sandbach & Company, was a business whose roots can be traced back to 1782. Having begun business in the cotton trade, the firms moved into sugar products and exported coffee, molasses, rum and sugar from the West Indies. They owned ships and plantations, and engaged in both slavery and transport of indentured labour.

The origins of Sandbach, Tinne & Company, together with its related firms, can be traced to James McInroy, a Scot from near Pitlochry who was trading in Grenada from 1782. Another of the original partners was Charles Stewart Parker, who arrived in Grenada to work as a clerk for his merchant uncle, George Robertson, in 1789. These men, too, were of Scots origin and within months of Parker's arrival arrangements were being made for them to form a trading partnership with a third Scotsman, a Mr Gordon. That partnership began operations in 1790 but soon hit difficulties as both uncle and nephew became upset with Gordon's behaviour. Gordon ceased to be a partner and McInroy joined them while continuing also independently to operate a business in the Dutch colony of Demerara. In 1792, the partnership was expanded to include Samuel Sandbach, an Englishman who had arrived in Grenada in 1788 to work for his uncle, who shared the same name and was also an established merchant there. Sandbach had gravitated to being a clerk for the McInroy, Parker and Robertson partnership and had impressed them so much that they invited him to join their firm on an equal standing.

The firm was initially involved in exporting cotton and coffee, and in importing manufactured goods from Britain McInroy had set up a store in Demerara in 1790 and was using ships to trade between there and Grenada. Although the partnership owned at least two cotton plantations in Demerara, it was the success of the store that became the most significant aspect of the new enterprise and it resulted in Parker and Robertson returning to Britain to develop business contacts. The two men set sail in haste for Grenada in 1795 when they heard news that the combination of a French landing on the island and an uprising by African slaves there was threatening British rule. McInroy managed to escape the island with around £9000 in goods by using the partnership's sloop, called Rambler, which then evaded a close-fought boarding attempt by a French privateer.

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