Early life He was born in
Campbeltown,
Argyll, and after starting in the grocery trade there, went to
Glasgow and worked for a merchant who had
Asian trading interests.
Career Mackinnon went to India in 1847 and joined an old schoolfriend,
Robert Mackenzie, in the coasting trade, carrying merchandise from port to port around the
Bay of Bengal. In 1856, he founded the shipping company
Calcutta and Burma Steam Navigation Company, which would become
British India Steam Navigation Company in 1862. In 1888, Mackinnon founded the
Imperial British East Africa Company and became its Chairman. The company, supported by the United Kingdom government as a means of establishing British influence in the region, was committed to eliminating the slave trade, prohibiting trade monopoly, and equal treatment for all nations. The trustees purchased the former estate of James Nicol Fleming on Keil Point,
Southend, Kintyre, including Keil House, and set up the Kintyre Technical School. After only nine years a fire destroyed the building and the school, renamed
Keil School, moved to Helenslee House in
Dumbarton where it continued until 2000. Following the closure of the school, and the sale of the land, the Mackinnon MacNeil Trust was able to continue to help young people and exists now to give bursaries to students from the Western Highlands and Islands going to university. The Trust is still chaired by a member of the Mackinnon family. In 1890, a statue dedicated to Sir William Mackinnon was erected in Mombasa, Kenya. It was later moved to the Dumbarton School in 1964, and finally moved again and re-erected in Campbelltown in 2004. ==References==