LINDSAY, William Schaw (1816-1877), of 17 Portland Place, London, Mdx.

William Schaw Lindsay, whose family background is unclear, was probably the third son of Joseph Lindsay of Ayr. Orphaned at an early age, he came under the guardianship of his uncle, William Schaw, a minister of the Secession church, before running off to Liverpool, aged fifteen, to seek employment. Initially destitute, he became a cabin-boy on a West Indiaman merchant ship, and his career trajectory thereafter was remarkable. In 1835 he became chief mate of the Olive Branch, and a year later was made captain. He received a sabre wound from a pirate, whom he then shot dead, in the Persian Gulf in 1839, before retiring the following year. After a five year spell as a ship fitter for the Castle Eden Coal Company at Hartlepool, he moved to London to begin his shipbroking activities, and founded W.S. Lindsay and Co. in 1849. He rapidly amassed 220 vessels in his fleet, making him one of the largest shipowners in the world, and during the Crimean War, his ships were under charter to both the British and French governments.1G. Goodwin, ‘Lindsay, William Schaw (1816-1877)’, rev. L.A. Ritchie, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com; Northern Echo, 31 Aug. 1877.

After being soundly defeated at the 1852 by-election at Monmouth and narrowly losing the poll at the 1852 general election at Dartmouth, Lindsay came forward at the Tynemouth by-election in March 1854. Although standing as a Liberal, he described himself as a ‘free trade Conservative’, because he desired the ‘maintenance of peace and order’. After a lively campaign he narrowly defeated his Conservative opponent.2Newcastle Courant, 31 Mar. 1854. A close confidant of Richard Cobden and John Bright, Lindsay did not, however, enter parliament a ‘pure free-trader’, as he believed that its extension to shipping would be harmful, and that reform of the navigation laws should be introduced only on a country-by-country reciprocal basis.3M. Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism, 1847-1860 (1995), 50. A frequent and capable debater, he spoke chiefly on the shipping interest and trade, and consistently urged economy in naval estimates. His select committee service was generally confined to shipping issues, and he chaired the 1860 inquiry into the transport service for troops.4PP 1860 (480), xviii. 2.

In the summer of 1855, Lindsay played an active part in the formation of the Administrative Reform Association. At its inaugural meeting, he launched a scathing attack on the government’s handling of shipping services to the Crimea, exposing what he believed to be ‘official indolence and inefficiency’.5The Times, 7 May, 14 June 1855. In the Commons, he consistently questioned the government’s administrative capabilities, although in the debate on administrative reform, Henry Drummond stated that Lindsay ‘meddles with matters which he does not understand’, 18 June 1855. Certainly, as an ‘independent’ Liberal, Lindsay sometimes exasperated his colleagues, and he voted for Roebuck’s motion of censure of the cabinet, 19 July 1855, for Disraeli’s motion to abolish income tax, 23 Feb. 1857, and for Cobden’s censure of the government over events at Canton, 3 Mar. 1857.

Returned unopposed at the 1857 general election, Lindsay predicted in a letter to Cobden that Palmerston would be ‘drowned ere long in the stream of liberals now rushing into the House, all pledged to move ahead’.6Lindsay to Cobden, 3 Apr. 1857, quoted in Taylor, Decline of British Radicalism, 290. He subsequently divided against the premier’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, but opposed the Derby ministry’s reform bill, labelling it ‘erroneous in principle and crude in its construction’, 6 Apr. 1859. After losing the support of the Tynemouth shipowners, who were uncomfortable with his support for free trade, he came forward for Sunderland at the 1859 general election, where he was comfortably returned in second place.

The weeks following his return proved the most controversial of his parliamentary career. Described by Disraeli as one of ‘some dozen men of doubtful Liberal allegiance’, Lindsay acted as an intermediary between the former and Roebuck in the days preceding the address, and at the Willis’s rooms meeting of 6 June, he spoke out against the proposed attack on Derby’s ministry.7Disraeli to Derby, 8 May 1859, quoted in A. Hawkins, Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics in Britain, 1855-59 (1987), 237. In the subsequent debate, he controversially declared that as the present administration provided the best chance of passing a reform bill and maintaining peace, he would vote against Russell’s amendment, a statement which prompted ‘rapturous cheers from the Tories’ and ‘dealt several damaging blows to the Liberal leaders’.8Hansard, 10 June 1859, vol. 154, cc. 311-8; The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 ed. T.A. Jenkins (1992), 84. Although the Derby ministry was defeated, the influence of Lindsay’s appeal was revealed by the presence of 14 members of the opposition in the government lobby.9Hawkins, Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics, 257.

Lindsay’s outspoken support for the Confederate states also courted controversy. He had travelled widely in North America before the civil war, and, on his return, announced to the Commons his intention of moving a resolution to recognise the Southern states, which he believed ‘must become an independent nation’, 20 June 1862. A year later, he accompanied Roebuck to an audience with Napoleon III, where the emperor, according to Lindsay, expressed his willingness to act with Britain in recognising the Confederate government.10See Lindsay’s letter in The Times, 4 July 1863. In the debate on the recognition of the South, his propriety in conducting an interview with Napoleon III was challenged by Austen Henry Layard, leading Lindsay to state that he had been employed by ministers to try and modify the views of the French government on trade and maritime affairs, a defence supported by Sir John Trelawny, who noted that he was ‘at least, an informal ambassador’.11Hansard, 13 July 1863, vol. 172, cc. 663-8; Trelawny, 265. His attempts to secure parliament’s recognition of the Confederate government, however, came to nothing.

Lindsay’s political and business careers ended prematurely in 1864, when he lost the use of his legs.12While still a teenager and serving as second mate on the Isabella, Schaw had been shipwrecked and broke both his legs and an arm, an incident that affected his subsequent health. Goodwin, ‘Lindsay, William Schaw’. Already an established author, having earlier published Our Navigation and Mercantile Marine Laws (1853) and Our Merchant Shipping (1860), he retired to his home in Shepperton, Middlesex, where he fictionalized many of his experiences for the anonymously published Log of my Leisure Hours (1868), and produced his authoritative four-volume History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce (1874-6). He died at Shepperton Manor in August 1877, and was survived by his wife.13Ibid.

Described by a fellow shipowner as being ‘a strange mixture of energy, industry, self-reliance, egotism and pretence’, Lindsay’s parliamentary career has arguably been overshadowed by his astonishing journey from cabin boy to ‘merchant prince’.14Ibid; C.W. Jones, Pioneer Shipowners (1938), ii. 132. His papers, however, offer important insights into mid-Victorian politics and his diary, located at the National Maritime Museum provides, according to Miles Taylor, the ‘best day-to-day account’ of the Administrative Reform Association.15National Maritime Museum, Caird Library, MS 88/075; Taylor, Decline of British Radicalism, 249. His letters to Disraeli are held by the Bodleian Library, Oxford;16Bodl. Oxf., Disraeli MSS. while the British Library holds his correspondence with Layard and Cobden.17BL Add. Mss 39101-39118, 43668-43671.