Sir William Mackinnon, 1st Baronet

Sir William Mackinnon, 1st Baronet, (23 March 1823 – 22 June 1893) was a Scottish ship-owner and businessman who built up substantial commercial interests in India and East Africa. He established the British-India Steam Navigation Company and the Imperial British East Africa Company.

Biography Early life He was born in Campbeltown, Argyll, and after starting in the grocery trade there, went to Glasgow and worked for a merchant who had Asian trading interests.

Career Mackinnon went to India in 1847 and joined an old schoolfriend, Robert Mackenzie, in the coasting trade, carrying merchandise from port to port around the Bay of Bengal.

In 1856, he founded the shipping company Calcutta and Burma Steam Navigation Company, which would become British India Steam Navigation Company in 1862.

In 1888, Mackinnon founded the Imperial British East Africa Company and became its Chairman. 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.

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 nine years a fire destroyed the building and the school, renamed Keil School, moved to Helenslee House in Dumbarton where it continued until 2000.

Following the closure of the school, and the sale of the land, the Mackinnon MacNeil Trust was able to continue to help young people and exists now to give bursaries to students from the Western Highlands and Islands going to university. The Trust is still chaired by a member of the Mackinnon family.

The statue of Sir William Mackinnon, in its original location in Mombasa Kenya. In 1890, a statue dedicated to Sir William Mackinnon was erected in Mombasa, Kenya. It was later moved to the Dumbarton School in 1964, and finally moved again and re-erected in Campbelltown in 2004.