He was a well-known Australian shipping magnate in the early part of the twentieth century and successfully stood for the Division of Melbourne at the inaugural federal election, held in 1901.

McEacharn was born in London on 8 February 1852 to a master mariner Malcolm and his wife Ann, née Gay, both from the Isle of Islay, Scotland.

After the death of his first wife, Ann, after only eleven months of marriage, he travelled to Queensland to launch the Australian trade in refrigerated meat.

Their daughter, Annie Madalaine McEacharn, died young, aged 7 years, possibly in Australia, but she is commemorated on a monumental inscription in St Mary's Church Goathland, Yorkshire, England dated 1992.

[citation needed] Their son Captain Neil Boyd W McEacharn (born Hanover Square, London, England 1884) established the famous Giardini Botanici Villa Taranto at Pallanza on Lake Maggiore in Italy in 1931 to 1940.

[6] A decline in immigrants, in combination with competition from another British company, led to McIlwraith, McEacharn progressively withdrawing their sailing ships from the Queensland run.

McEacharn relocated to Melbourne in 1887 and "lived in style in a mansion, Goathlands, surrounded by, among other things, art works he had brought back from Japan.

He strongly supported, for example, the interests of private employers, but at the same time, opposed women's suffrage and defended the use of Melanesian labour on the Queensland cane-fields.