When Herbert Henry Martyn (1842–1937) left his employer in 1874 and set up in business with a stonemason colleague, he could little have imagined that during his lifetime it would grow to employ more than a thousand people. Indeed, the reason he decided to leave was that he resented the injustice of his employer in ascribing some of his work to others. He grew up in poverty, but by that time, he was a skilled craftsman specialising in wood and stone carving with a rich experience of working in churches and carving memorials and gravestones. In 1888 the company was established as an association of art craftsmen. Together with his business partner Alfred Jeffrey Ems he worked on several churches. In 1900 he established a limited company. At this time, at the age of 30, his son Alfred Willie Martyn was made managing director. A. W.'s goal was to provide a complete service for architects. By then it had diversified into decorative plaster work, joinery, cabinet making, wrought iron work and casting in bronze and gun metal.

RMS Empress of Asia was an ocean liner built in 1912–1913 by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering at Govan on the Clyde in Scotland for Canadian Pacific Steamships.