Everything about William Pirrie 1st Viscount Pirrie totally explained
William James Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie,
KP,
PC(Ire) (
31 May,
1847–
6 June,
1924) was a leading
Irish shipbuilder and businessman.
Born in
Quebec,
Canada, the son of Irish parents, he was taken back to Ireland when he was two years old and spent his childhood at
Conlig,
County Down. Pirrie was educated at the
Royal Belfast Academical Institution before entering
Harland and Wolff shipyard as a gentleman apprentice in 1862. Twelve years later he was made a partner in the firm, and on the death of
Sir Edward Harland in
1895 he became its chairman, a position he was to hold until his death.
Belonging to a prominent family, his nephews included Prime Minister
John Miller Andrews,
Thomas Andrews, builder of the Titanic and
Sir James Andrews, 1st Baronet, the
Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
As well as overseeing the world's largest shipyard, Pirrie was elected
Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1896, and was re-elected to the office as well as made an Irish
Privy Counsellor the following year. He became Belfast's first honorary freeman in 1898, and also served as
Sheriff of County Antrim and subsequently of
County Down. He helped finance the
Liberals in
Ulster in the
1906 General Election, and that same year, at the height of Harland and Wolff's success, he was created
Baron Pirrie, of the City of Belfast. The following year he was appointed Comptroller of the Household of the
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and in 1908 he appointed
Knight of St Patrick (KP).
His support for the 1912
Home Rule Bill lost him favor in Belfast, and he was jeered in the streets after chairing a famous meeting of the Ulster Liberal Association addressed by
Winston Churchill. That same year he was to travel aboard the
Titanic, but illness prevented him from joining the ill-fated passage. Pro-Chancellor of the
Queen's University, Belfast from 1908 to 1914, Lord Pirrie was also in the years before the
First World War a member of the Committee on Irish Finance as well as
Lieutenant for the City of Belfast (both 1911). During the war he was a member of the War Office Supply Board, and in 1918 became Comptroller-General of Merchant Shipbuilding, organising
British production of merchant ships.
In 1921 Pirrie was elected to the
Northern Ireland Senate, and that same year was created
Viscount Pirrie, of the City of Belfast, in the honours for the opening of the
Parliament of Northern Ireland in July 1921, for his war work and charity work. He died three years later of pneumonia at sea whilst on a business trip to
South America; his body was brought back on
White Star Line's
RMS Olympic and was buried in
Belfast City Cemetery.
In the 1900s Lord Pirrie built the Temple of the Four Winds - the minor remains at ground level of which are on the edge of the Devil's punchbowl,
Hindhead.
A memorial to Pirrie was unveiled in the grounds of
Belfast City Hall in 2006.
Footnotes
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