William Pancoast Clyde (October 11, 1839 – November 18, 1923) was an American businessman who was the owner and president of the Clyde Steamship Company, a steamship and canal boat mercantile and passenger transportation business founded by his father Thomas Clyde in 1844. Early life and education Clyde was born on October 11, 1839 in Claymont, Delaware. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut but after the outbreak of the American Civil War, he left his studies to join the Union Army as part of the Philadelphia Grey Reserves. He eventually graduated from Trinity College in 1862 with a Masters of Arts degree. Career He took over control of his father's shipping business in 1861. In 1865 he became president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and dominated American shipping on the Pacific coast as well as transportation on the Panama Canal Railway in Central America. He was active in the development of railroad in the southern United States and was the owner of the Richmond and Danville Railroad. In 1878, Clyde established the West India Line to Caribbean ports. By 1882 he had shipping routes along the west coast of Florida, to New Orleans, down to Key West and Havana. William Clyde verticalized the shipping operations to include their own drydock company and coal mining operations which supplied the fuel for their vessels. In 1888, when civil war in Haiti broke out, Clyde sold weapons to Florvil Hyppolite under the protection of Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi, the commander of the U.S. North Atlantic Squadron. The election of President Benjamin Harrison gave Clyde additional influence over shipping routes to the Caribbean. Benjamin Franklin Tracy, the legal counsel for Clyde, became the Secretary of the Navy which allowed Clyde to influence Harrison's decisions about the Caribbean. The Haitian civil war ended with Hyppolite as president of Haiti. President Harrison appointed Frederick Douglass as minister resident and consult general to Haiti. Clyde was to receive a Clyde Line shipping contract to Haiti as a reward for supporting Hyppolite during the civil war. Douglass supported the shipping contract but was offended by the pressure he received to support the interests of one industrialist. Clyde tried to have him removed from the post because Douglass refused to renounce all other American interests in Haiti if the Clyde contract was not granted. U.S. government officials tried to use the Clyde contract to allow the U.S.