George Hayley (1722-1781) was a British merchant, shipowner, whaler and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1774 to 1781.
Hayley was the eldest son of George Hayley and his wife Hannah Hopkins. His initial career was that of cordwainer. [1] By 1767 he was an agent importing whale oil from America. He owned three or four South Sea whaling vessels between 1775 and 1781. [2]
He married Mary Storke, who was sister of John Wilkes and widow of Samuel Storke Jr., a merchant of London. [3] [Notes 1]
Hayley was elected Member of Parliament for City of London at the 1774 general election. He also became an alderman in 1774 and was a sheriff of London in 1775–6. He was also President of Lloyd’s of London. [8] He was returned as MP for the City at the 1780 general election. He was a poor speaker and his main concern was on behalf of merchants trading with America. [3]
Hayley died on 30 August 1781. [3]
Sir Brook Watson, 1st Baronet was an English merchant and politician who served as the Lord Mayor of London from 1796 to 1797. He is best known as the subject of John Singleton Copley's painting Watson and the Shark, which depicts a shark attack on Watson as a young man in Havana that resulted in the loss of his right leg below the knee.
William Jacob was an English merchant, shipowner, scientist, parliamentarian, public official and advocate for expanded British trade. In his later life he was a significant and effective advocate for the repeal of the Corn Laws.
Sydenham Teast (1755–1813) was a Quaker merchant, fur-trader, shipbuilder and shipowner based in Bristol, England, during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Sir Robert Wigram, 1st Baronet was a British merchant shipbuilder and Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons of Great Britain and of the United Kingdom between 1802 and 1807.
Sir Robert Fitzwygram, 2nd Baronet, FRS, born Robert Wigram, was a Director of the Bank of England and a Tory politician.
Sir Charles Price, 1st Baronet was a merchant in the City of London, shipowner, Lord Mayor of London and politician.
Sir William Curtis, 1st Baronet was an English merchant, banker, politician and slave trader. Although he had a long political and business career, he was probably best known for the banquets he hosted.
Alexander Champion (jnr) (11 Nov 1751 - 6 Apr 1809) was a London-based merchant and was active as a whaler in the late 18th century. His father was especially significant in the history of whaling in the United Kingdom. The Champion family was from Berkshire and moved to London in the early 18th century.
James Mangles was an English merchant and politician.
John St Barbe (1742–1816) was a British naval officer. He later became a prominent English shipbroker and shipowner in London. His vessels were active in whaling, the transport of convicts, and in the slave trade.
Camden, Calvert and King was an eighteenth-century partnership that traded in London from 1760 to 1824, transporting slaves and later convicts. The partners' profits from slave trading created capital to fund other ventures including the East Indies trade, supplying the British army and navy with food, insurance underwriting and the status to obtain positions in important London organisations including the Corporation of London, Bank of England, East India Company, African Company of Merchants and Trinity House.
Butterworth was launched in 1778 in France as the highly successful 32-gun privateer Américaine, of Granville. The British Royal Navy captured her early in 1781. She first appeared in a commercial role in 1784 as America, and was renamed in 1785 as Butterworth. She served primarily as a whaler in the Greenland whale fisheries. New owners purchased her in 1789. She underwent a great repair in 1791 that increased her size by almost 20%. She is most famous for her role in the "Butterworth Squadron", which took her and two ship's tenders on an exploration, sealing, otter fur, and whaling voyage to Alaska and the Pacific Coast of North America. She and her consorts are widely credited with being the first European vessels to enter, in 1794, what is now Honolulu harbour. After her return to England in 1795, Butterworth went on three more whaling voyages to the South Pacific, then Africa, and then the South Pacific again. In 1802 she was outward bound on her fourth of these voyage, this to the South Pacific, when she was lost.
Mather & Co. were three brothers that began in commerce and contracting for the British Royal Navy. They became owners of whalers and between them at one or another time were owners or part-owners of up to 29 vessels that engaged in the British Southern Whale Fishery between 1775 and 1815.
DuBuc was a vessel captured in 1797 and sold that year for mercantile use. She initially became a West Indiaman, but then the whaling company Mather & Co. purchased her. She made four voyages for them, being condemned at Hobart in October 1808.
Paul Le Mesurier was a Guernsey-born merchant, ship-owner, director of the East India Company, a Member of Parliament, an Alderman of London, and the Lord Mayor of London (1793–94).
Commercial whaling in Britain began late in the 16th century and continued after the 1801 formation of the United Kingdom and intermittently until the middle of the 20th century.
Mary Hayley was an English businesswoman. She parlayed an inheritance from her first husband into a sizeable estate with her second husband. Upon the latter's death, she took over the business and successfully operated a shipping firm from 1781 to 1792 before living out her life in Bath.
Alexander Binnie was a Scottish merchant and shipowner.
William Camden was an English merchant who was a partner in the slave-trading partnership of Camden, Calvert and King. He was also in partnership with his brother, John Camden, in the family sugar-refining business, and had business connections with prominent German and Huguenot families in east London.
Several ships have been named Vere: