File:Richard Green of Blackwall, Born 1803. Died 17th Jan 1863 RMG PX6590.jpg

Print entitled 'Richard Green of Blackwall, Born 1803. Died 17th Jan 1863'. Richard Green, shipbuilder and shipowner, was the eldest surviving son of George Green (see BHC2725) and his first wife, daughter of John Perry. Richard was born in December 1803, and when he entered the family firm it became Green, Wigram & Green. After his father's death he continued it with his younger half-brother Henry. Green had great business skill and was best known for his development of the last generation of East Indiamen called 'Blackwall frigates', built at Green's Blackwall yard on the Thames, and ships for the Australian trade, especially after the discovery of gold in Port Phillip (later Victoria) in 1852. To these shipowning successes he was beginning to add a China-trade dimension at the time of his death. Green was also a noted philanthropist, promoting children's education, improvement in merchant marine conditions and fostering the naval reserve. He established and endowed the Sailors' Home at Poplar and was benefactor to schools and other institutions in East London including the Merchant Seaman's Orphan Asylum, the Dreadnought Seaman's Hospital at Greenwich and the Poplar Hospital. He appears in the original 'Dictionary of National Biography' as a philanthropist and more comprehensively as a shipbuilder in the 2004 New Oxford DNB. There are photographs of the statue of Green put up in East London after his death in NMM MS GRN 25.