William P. Clyde

William Pancoast Clyde (October 11, 1839 – November 18, 1923) was an American businessman who was the owner and president of the Clyde Steamship Company, a steamship and canal boat mercantile and passenger transportation business founded by his father Thomas Clyde in 1844.

Career He took over control of his father's shipping business in 1861. In 1865 he became president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and dominated American shipping on the Pacific coast as well as transportation on the Panama Canal Railway in Central America. He was active in the development of railroad in the southern United States and was the owner of the Richmond and Danville Railroad. William Clyde verticalized the shipping operations to include their own drydock company and coal mining operations which supplied the fuel for their vessels.

In 1888, when civil war in Haiti broke out, Clyde sold weapons to Florvil Hyppolite under the protection of Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi, the commander of the U.S. North Atlantic Squadron. The election of President Benjamin Harrison gave Clyde additional influence over shipping routes to the Caribbean. Benjamin Franklin Tracy, the legal counsel for Clyde, became the Secretary of the Navy which allowed Clyde to influence Harrison's decisions about the Caribbean.

By 1899 the company had lines from New York to Wilmington, Brunswick, New York to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to Norfolk, New York to the West Indies, from Boston, Providence, and New York to Jacksonville, Florida as well as a St. John River Line. The steamships connected to rail lines in Florida. The company was sold to Charles W. Morse in 1906.

He was a charter member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.

He died on November 18, 1923, and was interred at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.