The Historic Lloyds of London

So my understanding of the how the Lloyds came about is: There was a coffee shop where ship captains and owners would meet and they would  make deals on covering the ships that would be sailing out. The largest trade in the early days was slave ships. Eventually it was changed from a coffee shop and they changed location a few times?
The name Underwriter actually came about from the Lloyds as when a deal was made, who ever was covering the ship, would sign there name to a slip (a slip of paper) eventually they started having more than one person cover the deal and each person would put there name under the other along with what share of the deal they were doing. There you have it.

So on the trading floor which they have four open trading floors you can see the books that they log all the deals that completed. They call it the Diary. They have kept a diary from the start of Lloyds and they continue to do this. I had a conversation with one gentleman and he commented on how the Diary has been slow? It later made sense to what he was talking about.
 
On the middle of the trade floor is a large bell, this was rung when a ship was lost. It wasn't a good thing to hear the bell ring as it meant they had to get there wallets out.


They have a lot of silver and gold goblets, coins and plates on display that the Lloyds have bought back from the ship owners that they gave them to at one time. Lloyds would cover Merchant ships and trade ships and when one or the other would help in defending another ship battle or take over, they would reward the ship for saving them. Otherwise the Lloyds would have been paying for the loss of a ship.
I thought this was all really interesting and there is a lot more history and information on this. You can read more if you Google Lloyds of London.