Thomas Royden, 1st Baron Royden

Thomas Royden, 1st Baron Royden (born May 22, 1871 in Holmefield Mossley Hill , † November 6, 1950 in Bramdean, Alresford, Hampshire) was an English businessman and politician ( Conservative Party ).

Life and activity

Royden was the eldest son of Thomas Royden, 1st Baron (1831-1917), a conservative politician and head of the shipping company Thomas Royden & Sons, and his wife Alice Elizabeth, née. Dowdall. Royden inherited the baronet title from his father after his death in 1917.

After visiting the Winchester College and Magdalen College of Oxford University , which he left in 1893 with a degree he began in 1895 as a businessman in the company of his father to work in Liverpool.

Royden had owned a ship in Liverpool since 1902. Since 1905 he was one of the directors of the Cunard Line (Cunard Steam Ship Company) and served from 1909 (until 1922) as vice chairman ( deputy chairman ) of the shipping company. One of the leading experts on shipping, he was appointed chairman of the Admiralty transport advisory committee after the outbreak of World War I and in 1917, after the United States entered the war, by the British government in sent the United States to help organize the shipping of American troops and equipment to Europe. As early as 1913 he was involved in the planning of the planning of material and troops from the British main island, in the event of a continental war, to France. From 1916 to 1921 he was also a member of the Royal Commission on Food Supplies.

In 1919 Royden took part in the Paris Peace Conference to organize the post-war order as a representative of the interests of the shipowners.

From 1922 to 1930 Royden officiated finally chairman ( chairman ) of the Cunard Line. Under his chairmanship, among other things, the construction of the Queen Mary began, the first ship that was used to maintain shipping between Southampton and New York. Afterwards he was a member of the board of directors of Cunard until his death and from 1934 to the board of directors of Cunard White Star Ltd., which was founded that year.

In addition to his duties as a shipowner at Cunard, Royden was temporarily chairman of the Liverpool Steamship Owner's Association (from 1910) and president of the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom. In 1917 he was sheriff of Cheshire county and justice of the peace there. He has also served on numerous boards of directors, including the Anchor Line, Brocklebank Ltd, the Commonwealth and Dominion Line, the Midland Bank, the Shell Transport and Trading Company, the Suez Canal Company, the Phoenix Assurance Company, the Union Marine and General Insurance Company and chairman of Edmundsons' Electricity Corporation, and the Imperial Continental Gas Association.

At the local level in his home town of Liverpool, he has made a name for himself by sponsoring the David Lewis Northern Hospital, the Mersey Mission to Seamen, the Liverpool Shipbrokers' Benevolent Society, and serving on the Executive Committee of Liverpool Cathedral.

On the occasion of the elections to the British House of Commons in December 1918, Royden was elected to Parliament as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the constituency of Bootle, which he belonged to until 1922, when he did not run again.

In 1941 Royden became chairman of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.

On January 28, 1944, Royden was raised to the rank of Baron as Baron Royden of Franklby in the County Palatine of Chester. Since he was childless, this title opened up with his death. His baronet title passed to his brother Ernest.

family

Royden had been with Quenelda Mary, b. Anlesey, married, the widow of Charles James Williamson.

Honors

Royden was a member of the French Legion of Honor and holder of the Italian Order of Saint Mauritius and Saint Lazarus and the Afghan Star of Afghanistan.

literature

• FA Bates: "Royden, Thomas, Baron Royden (1871-1950)", in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography .