Career
Sir William"s professional career was as a steamship engineer in the early years of construction of these vessels and his business was the Scotia engineering works in Sunderland, England. He was also involved with a sea line, the Albyn Lincolnshire, which bore the beginning letters of his surname. His early life included crew experience on steamships which were at one stage gun-running to America during the American Civil War, and he wrote of a number of dangerous escapades during this time.
William Allan published a number of books of traditional Scottish poetry.
