Commodore Sir William James, 1st Baronet (5 September 1721 – 16 December 1783) was a Welsh naval officer and politician who sat in the British House of Commons representing West Looe from 1774 to 1783.

Initially serving on a coaster from Bristol, James entertained a brief stint as a Royal Navy cabin boy before becoming a sea captain engaged in the trade between Britain and its colonies.

Settling down in England, James remarried and purchased an English country house in Eltham, in addition to being elected several times as a director of the East India Company.

[2] After a few years, James left the navy and became a sea captain, sailing a merchant ship which participated in the trade between Virginia, the British West Indies and Great Britain.

[11] In 1757, James, who was in Bombay, was charged by his superiors with informing Watson, who was commanding a squadron near the French Indian city of Chandernagore, of an outbreak of war between Great Britain and France.

[1] Despite his relationship with Sulivan, James soon began cultivating a friendship with prominent statesman John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, "whose influence brought him the honours that he enjoyed.

[1] Although he was also attempting to secure the governorship of Bombay during this period, James withdrew his candidature after making his political aspirations clear to government officials.

In 1776, James secured a government contract to provision British forces stationed in Canada; in the same year, he was also elected as a deputy chairman of the East India Company.

[15] During and after his career in India, rumours developed that James had married an Indian woman and had a son named Richard who was supposedly the first person of Asian descent to succeed to a British title; these have been dismissed as baseless by Bowyer.

[16] After James died, Anne commissioned English architect Richard Jupp to construct Severndroog Castle, a triangular Gothic folly built in 1784.

[17][18] The building was constructed at the summit of Shooter's Hill near Blackheath, and was intended by Anne to serve as a memorial to her husband, being named after the site of his most famous victory.

[1][19] During the First World War, Severndroog Castle served as an observation post for a detachment of Special Constabulary officers, who were charged with detecting incoming air raids over London by the Luftstreitkräfte.

They noted that prior to James' arrival in India, the Bombay Marine had participated in several unsuccessful battles against the Angre family, who after their defeats at Severndroog and Gheriah ceased to pose an effective threat to Company shipping.