Sir James Caird, Baronet

Sir James Caird, Baronet of Glenfarquhar (2 January 1864 – 27 September 1954) was a shipowner and the principal donor in creating the National Maritime Museum, London.

The eldest son of James Caird, a lawyer, and his wife, Mary Ann née Hutcheson, James Caird was born in Glasgow, Scotland, educated at Glasgow Academy, and then in 1878 joined a firm of East India merchants, William Graham & Co. Caird married Henrietta Anna Stephens in 1898, with whom he had one daughter.

In 1889, he went to London, where he soon joined Turnbull, Martin & Co., the firm that managed the Scottish Shire Line. He quickly became the manager and, by 1903, was the sole partner and owner of the Scottish Shire Line. His company developed a cooperative enterprise with Houlder and Federal Lines to open trade with Australia and New Zealand. In 1916, he started a shipyard at Chepstow, a place located away from enemy attack, in order to quickly build a standardised design of ships that could replace wartime ship losses. A year later in 1917, his success led to a government buy-out. Looking ahead, Caird foresaw that the shipping industry would decline in the postwar era, so he sold many of his shipping interests but remained a director in some 25 companies associated with shipping, shipbuilding, and maritime trade. He remained chairman of the Smithfield and Argentine Meat Company and continued to hold his significant number of founders' shares. Caird died in Wimbledon, Surrey, England.

Having accumulated a significant fortune, Caird became interested in preserving British naval and shipping memorials. As a member of the Society for Nautical Research, he provided the largest amount of money necessary to repair and restore HMS Victory in the 1920s, giving an initial £50,000 with an additional donation of £15,000. He also was responsible for trying to save HMS Implacable (originally the French Navy's Téméraire-class ship of the line Duguay-Trouin, launched in 1800), another survivor of the Battle of Trafalgar.

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