W. S. Lindsay

William Schaw Lindsay (died 1877) was a Scottish-born shipowner, politician and historian of shipping. Orphaned young, he went to sea as a boy and worked his way up from cabin boy to captain before founding a successful shipping and shipbroking firm in London. He sat in Parliament for Tynemouth and later Sunderland, campaigned for reform of the navigation laws and of the Admiralty, and during the American Civil War urged British recognition of the Confederacy. His four-volume History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce, completed in 1876, drew on a lifetime in the trade.