1st Baronet, Welsh-English commander and politician (born 1720)

Sir William James

Commodore Sir William James, 1st Baronet was a Bombay Marine officer and politician who represented West Looe in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1774 to 1783. Born in Pembrokeshire, Wales to a family of unclear background, James went to sea at a young age and worked onboard merchant ships which traded between Britain's Southern Colonies and the West Indies, during which he was captured by the Spanish during the War of the Austrian Succession. James eventually returned to England at some point in the early 1740s and possibly married either the landlady of a Wapping public house or a widow named Elizabeth Birch; historical records are not fully clear if James actually married during this period.