Alan Garrett Anderson

Sir Alan Garrett Anderson (9 March 1877 – 4 May 1952) was a British civil servant, politician and shipowner. Early life and career Anderson was born in 1877 to James George Skelton Anderson and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. Anderson's father was a shipping magnate who merged the family shipping business, Anderson, Anderson & Co., with Frederick Green & Co. on 12 February 1878 to create the Orient Steam Navigation Company. Anderson's mother was the first British woman in England to qualify as a doctor. He was one of three children born to the couple. One of his sisters, Louisa Garrett Anderson, followed in her mother's footsteps and became a doctor herself, serving during World War I as the head of a military hospital, while Anderson joined his father in the family's shipping enterprise in 1897. Prior to joining the company, Anderson was educated at Eton College (1890 and 1895) and Trinity College, Oxford (1896). Once established in the shipping industry, Anderson expanded into the related field of rail transport, becoming director of Midland Railway in 1911, a seat he maintained through the merger of that railway in 1923 into London, Midland and Scottish Railway. First World War Anderson utilised his business experiences internationally in service of the government during the First World War. Appointed vice-chairman of the Royal Commission responsible for regulating the distribution of wheat supplies, he dealt generally with Great Britain's western allies. He dealt specifically with the United States first in processing enemy cargo aboard US vessels under Walter Runciman and, after the US entered the war, in marketing wheat in the United States as well as Canada along with Arthur Balfour.