W. C. Corsan & Co.

Most Sheffield Bowie knife-makers remain frustratingly anonymous and none committed their thoughts to paper. None that is, but one: William Carson Corsan (1824-1876). He was born on 11 November 1824, the son of a nonconformist Scot, William Corsan (d. 9 February 1869, aged 69), and his wife, Margaret. William Sen. was a successful Sheffield draper. William Jun. had intellectual inclinations and in 1850 lectured the Sheffield Phrenological Society on ‘Phrenology in Relation to the Soul’. But he also became involved in the steel and cutlery trade and made his early fortune in trading with America. By 1852, William was a general merchant and manufacturer in Eyre Street with Joseph Denton and Joseph Burdekin. John Sawyer, a book keeper in New York, and John Boake also joined the partnership. Corsan sold a wide range of tools to the Americas, including Bowie knives. But the Civil War severed Corsan’s links with the Southern Confederacy. With the war at its height and his business becalmed, in October 1862 Corsan decided to see things for himself. He sailed from Liverpool to New York and then to New Orleans, where he crossed into Mississippi and rebel lines. His tour of the South took in Jackson, Mobile, Selma, Montgomery, Atlanta, Augusta, Charleston, and finally Richmond. On his return to Sheffield, he penned Two Months in the Confederate States, including a Visit to New Orleans under the Domination of General Butler (London, 1863). The book was reprinted in 1996 (edited by Benjamin H. Trask), when it was praised for providing an important eyewitness account of wartime conditions in the South and for giving an insight into the views of the English merchant class. Corsan explained the reason for his trip: ‘The firm of which I was a member has for years dealt with many Southern merchants, from or of whom we had heard almost nothing since the commencement of the civil war. I was anxious, if possible, to ascertain whether our old friends were living or dead, and solvent or ruined’. Disappointingly, Corsan’s memoir contains virtually nothing of interest on the cutlery trade and he made no reference to his business affairs. However, this was probably because Corsan wished to disguise his authorship (he published his book anonymously under the soubriquet, ‘An English Merchant’). Corsan only mentions Bowie knives once in the entire text and only then to note that a small band of Confederate soldiers was not carrying them. His conclusion from the trip – that the South could not be defeated and that there was no reason why the South and North should not live amicably and prosperously apart – proved very wide of the mark. In 1863, Corsan’s partnership with Denton and Burdekin was dissolved. Corsan’s wife, Ann, died in 1866, aged 34, and he then moved to New York as agent for Harrison Brothers & Howson. In 1868, W. C. Corsan & Co became insolvent. In 1875 he returned to Sheffield a sick man and died at his mother’s residence, Summerfield, Broomhill, on 2 December 1876, aged 52. He was buried alongside his wife in the General Cemetery. A candid obituary judged him ‘a merchant of more than average culture and ability, but perhaps a little too sanguine for the successful carrying out of large undertakings’ (Sheffield Independent, 5 December 1876). He left under £1,500.