Entrepreneurial fish-canner. Born in Linlithgow, West left for Canada in 1832, settling in Quebec where he married and trained as a millwright. He went to California in 1848, attracted by the Gold Rush and then settled in Oregon in 1851. There he established a sawmill on the Columbia River and began salting and preserving salmon, which was exported in barrels around Cape Horn to the east coast of the USA and the UK. In 1857, West opened a salmon cannery and went on to invent and built an automated can-filling machine. He also canned meat and berries to keep his workers and machinery employed outside the salmon season. The settlement of Westport that grew up around these enterprises took his name.
West died in Westport in 1888, the same year that the Liverpool merchants T.L. Pelling and C.H. Stanley, who had been one of the principal importers of his fish, acquired the rights to his name. The company went on to can tuna and the well-known brand is now owned by multinational seafood supplier Thai Union.
