William Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie

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William James Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie, KP, PC (May 31, 1847 –June 6, 1924) was a leading Irish shipbuilder and businessman. Born in Quebec, he 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.

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 High Sheriff of successively County Antrim and 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 was made a Knight of St Patrick.

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. He died three years later of pneumonia on a business trip to South America and his body was brought back on White Star Line's RMS Olympic and was buried in Belfast City Cemetery.

In the 1900's 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.

[edit] External links

• Encyclopedia Titanica Biography of William Pirrie

Political offices
Preceded by William McCammond	Lord Mayor of Belfast 1896–1898	Succeeded by James Henderson
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New Creation	Viscount Pirrie 1921–1924	Succeeded by Extinct
	Baron Pirrie 1906–1924