was the son of an English shell merchant who started an oil business in 1892; Samuel named his father’s company The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company, Limited (1897). The initial business centered on shipping oil exports for lamps and cooking to the Far East. He commissioned a special ship in 1892, the 5,010-ton Murex that would become the world's first oil tanker; he began exporting Russian kerosene through the Suez Canal to Singapore and Bangkok. In 1907, Shell merged with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, the Dutch company with significant oil holdings in Asia, to form the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies, one the world’s largest multinational oil corporations. Samuel was knighted in 1898 and would become Viscount Bearsted in 1925.