Sir William Blackett

Sir William Blackett was a businessman who founded a mercantile and industrial base in Newcastle.

At the time, Newcastle was the centre of the world’s largest coal-producing area employing 10,000 workmen in the mines and exporting over 450,000 tons of coal to London in 1633–4. Young Blackett became in 1636 an apprentice of the Company of Merchant Adventures which controlled the coal trade in the town obtaining his freedom of the company nine years later. He started his career as maritime merchant and became a member of the Eastland Company which had exclusive rights to trade in the Baltic. First he traded with Denmark and by 1659 he extended his business interests to the whaling and fishing trade as far away as Greenland. Later he also dealt in lead, coal, salt, butter, and barrels of salmon to Sweden, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Rouen, and bringing back iron, timber, pitch, tar, peas, beans, and brass ware. This seaborne trade was a basis of his later success in the coal and lead industries. Immensely wealthy, Blackett even minted his own copper token with the arms of Blackett on the face in order to pay his men.

During his lifetime, Blackett performed various public duties. He served as mayor and town’s sheriff, an alderman, commissioner of assessment and a captain in militia. Blackett also sat in the House of Commons from 1673 to 1680.