Sir Benjamin Chapman Browne (26 August 1839 – 1 March 1917) was an engineer and shipbuilder, chairman of R. & W. Hawthorn, Leslie and Company (1886–1916), Mayor of Newcastle, (1885–1886 and 1886–1887), and deputy Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland (1901).

[4] Browne had wanted the business to manufacture only marine engines but orders were buoyant for locomotives.

The combined business became R. & W. Hawthorn, Leslie and Company, Browne was elected chairman and the firm's activities then included the building of torpedo boats and destroyers.

[3] He authored a number of publications and several of these are brought together in the compilation Selected Papers on Social and Economic Questions published by Cambridge University Press in 1918.

His eldest son, Edward Granville Browne became an Iranologist and was elected to the Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge.