James Henry Scott
| James Henry Scott | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 20 July 1845 |
| Died |
October 22, 1912 (aged 67) Edinburgh |
| Spouse(s) | Emily Reid Yuill |
| Parents | Charles Cunningham Scott and Helen Rankin |
Contents
Biography
James Henry Scott, Senior Partner of John Swire & Sons
Limited from 1898 until his death in 1912, had a major role
in developing Swire’s early industrial interests, which would
later be redeveloped as an extensive property portfolio.
Jim Scott was the third son of C.C. Scott, Chairman of Scott’s
Shipbuilding & Engineering. He left Liverpool for Shanghai in
the Blue Funnel steamer Achilles on 27th September 1866,
at the age of 21. In his pocket was a letter from Alfred Holt to
John Samuel Swire, asking him to give the young man a trial
as a shipping clerk. So began Scott’s life-long connection
with the firm of Butterfield & Swire.
John Swire had recently arrived in Shanghai and was
in the process of establishing his new House; it consisted
of Swire, himself, as taipan, two specialists to handle
Manchester (cotton) and Yorkshire (woollen) goods, young
Jim Scott as bookkeeper and general clerk, and an office
‘junior’. As Scott later recalled: ‘In those days firms in
China found the members of their staff in board and lodging.
Butterfield & Swire being then small, all dwelt in the same
house and messed together, the clerks having the privilege
of asking their friends to dine when the taipan was out,
but at no other time’. As newly appointed agents for Blue
Funnel, there was much to learn: ‘as no one in the newly
started firm knew anything of custom-house work, it was
a case of groping in the dark for the young shipping clerk’.
Despite this unpromising beginning, Scott clearly had
aptitude and, by the age of 24, Swire had arranged for him
to take charge, on a temporary basis, successively of the
Yokohama and Shanghai offices; he took over the new Hong
Kong head office from the end of 1870. Between bouts of
ill-health, which forced him home to the UK for extended
periods, Scott would spend the remainder of his career in
the East alternating between Hong Kong and Shanghai. He
was made a partner of John Swire & Sons from 1st January
1874 and on John Swire’s death in 1898, took over as its
Senior Partner — the news reaching him by telegram as he
stepped off a P&O steamer at Singapore.
In spite of a 20-year age difference, Swire and Scott
were firm friends through thick and thin and Swire trusted
his judgement implicitly. Scott spent a year and a half
helping to run the UK end of the business while John Swire
travelled east in 1873, and was installed in Swire’s London
flat with instructions to ‘treat it as your own’. On John
Swire’s return in 1874, it was Scott who suggested he take
a look at two brand new coastal steamers up for sale cheap
at the family shipyard and so precipitated the expansion
of China Navigation’s interests from the Yangtze onto the
China Coast. And it was Scott who was sent to scout the
location for the proposed Taikoo Sugar Refinery in Hong
Kong in 1881 — diligently inspecting the site (by boat) during
a typhoon, in order to gauge how sheltered it would be.
Less happily, it was Scott who in 1884 had to break the news
to John Swire, once again visiting China, that his Shanghai
comprador had committed suicide having been uncovered
in major embezzlement of the China Navigation Company.
Of his role as Senior Partner from 1898, following
John Swire’s death, Scott said that he did his ‘best to
maintain the high reputation of the firm, and to carry on the
business on the lines [Swire] followed’. However, he also
proved to be a decisive and far-sighted leader: keen to
steer the firm into new areas of interest; pragmatic in
retrenching businesses that failed. He invested in a cold
store in the Philippines, established a tug and lighter
business to carry transhipped cargo up the Hai River
to Tianjin, and made the hard decision to cut China
Navigation’s prestige Australia line when cabotage and
immigration restrictions rendered it unviable.
James Henry Scott is principally remembered for
two initiatives which would have a lasting impact on
Hong Kong, his adopted home of so many years. The first
was Taikoo Dockyard, the construction of which he put
in train from 1900 — John Swire having fiercely resisted
‘the dockyard scheme’ and declared the sugar refinery to
be his ‘last child’. Scott identified and purchased a plot of
land to the east of the refinery compound and the family
firm, Scott’s Shipbuilding, acted as expert advisors. It was
a brave move, given the scale of the undertaking and the
huge capital investment. The dockyard took eight years to
construct, its opening coinciding with a world-wide slump
in shipping that was to last several years. Jim Scott lived
long enough — just — to see Taikoo build its first ships,
but not to see it return a profit.
Scott is also remembered as the leading voice
amongst Hong Kong’s British business community who
spoke out in support of the foundation of the University
of Hong Kong. The majority of the hongs insisted that an
enlarged, western-educated, Chinese middle class would
usurp British commercial supremacy, but Scott spoke of
his ‘deep-rooted belief in the great advantages that are likely
to accrue to the Colony’. And he put his money where his
mouth was, endowing the university with a substantial sum
and creating a chair of engineering. With typical modesty,
he demurred when it was suggested it be named the Scott
Chair, and so instead the Taikoo Chair of Engineering came
into being.
Scott married Emily Yuill, sister of a B&S colleague, George Yuill (who later became Swire’s agent in Australia) and, after her death, Mina Dunlop. Two of his sons and two grandsons became directors of John Swire & Sons; one of the latter, Edward Scott, went on to become Chairman of the Swire group. James Henry Scott died on 22nd October 1912; like his predecessor, he never retired: managing the firm he had seen come into being was not just his job — it was his life.
