John Coutts (shipbuilder)
British businessman
John Henry Sangster Coutts (1810–1862) was a Scottish shipbuilding pioneer who built the first full-size iron ship and the first "double bottomed" ship.
Life
John Coutts was born in 1810 in Aberdeen, the son of farmer Patrick Coutts and Margaret Milne. Coutts was always regarded as a gifted Aberdonian from his precocious up-bringing. Coutts had been the son to a farmer named Patrick Coutts in Aberdeenshire. Had been titled one of the "Three Wise Men" from Arberdeen, Coutts was fundamental and the foundation to the innovative iron ship building industry in Tyneside. In 1839, the first iron made sailing ship, the John Garrow, was built along with the help of his partner John Ronalds in his shipyard in Aberdeen. It was shortly thereafter in 1840 when Coutts moved south to Tyneside to go at it alone and open his own shipyard.
John Coutts was very adamant about making it known he was not related to the well renowned and highly reputable Scottish Coutts Family, who was well known for banking. It was in 1840 when Coutts had traveled south to Tyneside to open his own shipyard in an old wooden shipyard at Low Walker on the Tyne. It was at this old wooden shipyard on the Tyne in 1842 that Coutts had built and then launched the famous P.S. Prince Albert; the first iron ship of substantial size to fare the seas and the river Thames.
“John Coutts (shipbuilder)” enters the record as british businessman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, Coutts and shipbuilder can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Coutts (shipbuilder)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.