Sir Edward Hain, JP (26 December 1851 – 20 September 1917)[1] was an English shipping magnate and politician from Cornwall, England.
[2] Hain was born at St Ives in December 1851 and received his education locally at Mr James Rowe's school, at Academy Steps, in Fore Street.
However, on his return to St Ives in 1878, his experience in the tea trade had convinced him that the family company should switch from sail to steam.
Sir Edward’s family kept Treloyhan until about 1928, when the property was sold to a company formed to develop part of the extensive grounds as a building estate.
[3] Hain was described as an "ardent Nonconformist"; he was a benefactor of the United Methodist Church in St Ives and had a "very great interest" in temperance.
[11] The relationship between Hain and Readhead produced eighty-seven ships for the company, all with the prefix ‘Tre’ a Cornish word for "farmstead".
Other ships included Tregenna, Trevethoe, Trevarrack, Trevalgan, Tremeadow, Treveal and Trelyon (a variant spelling of "Treloyhan", the Hain's estate).
The twenty-seven Hain Line cargo steamers, totalling 108,787 gross tons had all been built by J Readhead and Sons of South Shields.
[17] In 1903 he had already announced that as a supporter of Free Trade he could no longer support the government of Arthur Balfour[12] and, in 1904, he signed an open letter siding with the views of the Duke of Devonshire rather than Joseph Chamberlain,[18] the leading advocate of "tariff reform" (that is, imposing high tariffs in place of free trade).