Edward Lawrence

Sir Edward Lawrence (1825–1909) was an English merchant in Liverpool. He dealt in cotton and was a major figure of the British merchants' effort to circumvent the Union blockade of exports from the Confederate states. Early life He was a younger son of the Liverpool brewer James Lawrence (c.1799–1864), who was Mayor of Liverpool in 1844. Schooled to age 16, he was apprenticed to Jones, Mann & Foster, cotton brokers in Liverpool. He then travelled for three years, in Asia and the United States. Returning to Liverpool, he went into business on his own account, setting up Edward Lawrence & Co. and trading with Bombay. Edward Lawrence & Co. and the blockade of the Confederacy During the American Civil War, Edward Lawrence & Co. was in partnership with the Anglo-Confederate Trading Company. It commissioned the blockade runner Wild Dayrell under Captain Thomas Cubbins, which was destroyed in 1864 by USS Sassacus off North Carolina. Lawrence was part of the consortium which commissioned the early blockade-runner Banshee, also for the Anglo-Confederate Trading Company. It was owned by John Toulmin Lawrence, his brother and a partner in the company. The Banshee sailed between Nassau, Bahamas and Wilmington, North Carolina; in Nassau the cotton cargo was unloaded, and then loaded onto British ocean-going vessels.