Reardon Smith went to sea at the age of 12 as a cabin boy on the, 32 – ton sloop, Unity before serving on a number of ships which traversed the Bristol Channel and, later, on ships carrying railway lines to America, returning with copper ore from Chile.

Between the age of 20 and 34 he served as a master mariner with a Glasgow shipping company before returning to his wife, Ellen and family who were now living in Cardiff. 

With William Seager, he established Tempus Shipping Co. Ltd, but in 1905 he founded his own company W. R. Smith & Sons Ltd.

In 1912, one of his ships, The City of Cardiff was grounded near Land’s End and Smith visited St. Just to assess the wreckage. 

It was then that he determined that West Cornwall was a potential source of wealth and he established the St. Just Steamship Co Ltd which became hugely profitable as a goods transport line in the First World War and which continued in various forms, and under different names until the late 1920s, bringing vast wealth to the mine owners of West Cornwall but little financial benefit to the West Cornwall miners themselves.