- Sir William Mackinnon, 1st Baronet
Sir William Mackinnon, 1st Baronet (
13 March 1823 -22 June 1893 ) was a Scottish ship-owner and businessman who built up substantial commercial interests inIndia andEast Africa . He established theBritish India Steam Navigation Company and theImperial British East Africa Company .He was born in
Campbeltown ,Argyll , and after starting in the grocery trade there, went toGlasgow and worked for a merchant who had Asian trading interests. Mackinnon went to India in 1847 and joined an old schoolfriend, Robert Mackenzie, in the coasting trade, carrying merchandise from port to port around theBay of Bengal .In 1856 he founded the shipping company
Calcutta and Burma Steam Navigation Company , which would becomeBritish India Steam Navigation Company in 1862. It grew into a huge business trading round the coasts of theIndian Ocean , extending its operations toBurma , thePersian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, fromAden toZanzibar , where Mackinnon founded theImperial British East Africa Company , chartered in 1888. The company, supported by the United Kingdom government as a means of establishing British influence in the region, was committed to eliminating the slave trade, prohibiting trade monopoly, and equal treatment for all nations. In 1889 Mackinnon was made 1stBaronet of Strathaird and Loup.Mackinnon promoted
Henry Morton Stanley 'sEmin Pasha Relief Expedition , first enlisting Stanley, then writing to government ministers including Lord Iddesleigh, theForeign Secretary , and enlisting friends to form a committee which could oversee the expedition and meet more than half the cost.In 1891 he founded the Free Church of Scotland East African Scottish Mission. He died in London in 1893 and was buried at Clachan in
Kintyre , near his home, Balinakill House. He and his nephew, Duncan MacNeil, left bequests which were used to start the Mackinnon MacNeil Trust with a mandate to "provide a decent education to deserving Highland lads".The trustees purchased the former estate of
James Nicol Fleming on Keil Point,Southend, Kintyre , including Keil House, and set up the Kintyre Technical School. After only 9 years a fire destroyed the building and the school, renamedKeil School , moved to Helenslee House inDumbarton where it continued until 2000.References
*J. Forbes Munro, "Maritime Enterprise and Empire: Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-1893" (2003)
*"Oxford Dictionary of National Biography "Further reading
*John S. Galbraith, " Mackinnon and East Africa 1878-1895" (Cambridge 1972)
* [http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=149&inst_id=19 Sir William Mackinnon]
* [http://www.kintyremag.co.uk/1998/15/page8.html Kintyre Magazine]
* [http://www.biship.com/ BI Ship (British India Steam Navigation) site]
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