Colonial Despatches

William Schaw Lindsay was born in Ayr, South-West Scotland, on 19 December 1815.1 Orphaned at a young age, he spent his youth at sea. In 1840 he became an agent for the Castle Eden Coal Company.2 By the mid-1840s he was working as a shipping agent and broker and had started his own company, W. S. Lindsay & Co.3 He was member of parliament for Tynemouth and North Shields from 1854 to 1859, and, after resigning that seat, represented Sunderland from 1859 to 1865.4 During the American Civil War, Lindsay was a controversial figure who opposed slavery but supported the South's right to self-determination.5 He died on 28 August 1877.6

• 1. Michael Clark, William Schaw Lindsay: Righting the Wrongs of a Radical Shipowner, Northern Mariner / Le Marin du Nord vol. 20, no. 3 (July 2010): 283.
• 2. Clark, William Schaw Lindsay, 284; Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography [vol. 33] (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1893), 316. http://n2t.net/ark:/13960/t8bh2bw2s
• 3. Clark, William Schaw Lindsay, 285; Lee, Dictionary of National Biography, 316-317. http://n2t.net/ark:/13960/t8bh2bw2s; William Stewart Lindsay, William Schaw Lindsay and the Oceangoing Auxiliary Steamer, Mariner's Mirror vol. 106, no. 1 (2020): 46. http://doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2020.1692577
• 4. Clark, William Schaw Lindsay, 292, 294; Lee, Dictionary of National Biography, 317. http://n2t.net/ark:/13960/t8bh2bw2s; Death of Mr. W. S. Lindsay, Glasgow Herald, 29 August 1877, 5.
• 5. Clark, William Schaw Lindsay, 296-299.
• 6. Death of Mr. W. S. Lindsay, Glasgow Herald, 29 August 1877, 5.