WM shipbuilder and philanthropist known as 'the Legend of Newcastle' and 'a Prince of Shipbuilders'. He was the grandson of a Thurso bootmaker, Benjamin Sutherland, whose family had moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, where they were converted by Methodist preachers on the quayside. His father, Benjamin John Sutherland, developed a virtual monopoly in grain as feed for quayside horse-drawn traffic before developing an import/export business of chemicals, flour and grain; he was elected Sheriff of Newcastle in 1891 and was an instigator in the erection of the Wesley monument on the quayside still extant in Wesley Square. He married Mary Anne Proud in the Brunswick Wesleyan Chapel in Newcastle; she was the daughter of Joseph Proud, a Primitive Methodist ranter who led camp meetings in Gateshead.
Arthur Sutherland rose from a junior clerk in a shipbuilding company to founding his Sutherland Steamship Company in 1896 and would become Chairman of seven shipping companies and a Director of four others. He was also involved in coal exporting and rope manufacture, was a millionaire by 1912 and was knighted in 1920. He owned large docks on the Thames, was a Freeman of the City of London, and was sometime owner of Aston Martin and Dunstanburgh Castle.
Always suspicious of socialism, he was against strike action and nationalisation, yet worked amicably with Methodist trade unionists, whom he saw as 'doughty and sporting opponents who said what they meant' and who had 'the intensity of pit-row chapel behind them'.
As a member of the Newcastle Methodist Coalfields Committee, he contributed to the easing of tensions between WM capitalists and PM trade unionists. He is credited with turning the Depression round in the North East by injecting £1million in 1935 into the building of 17 ships on the Wear which set the then highest standards of crew accommodation and safety.
He always saw himself as 'a chapel man – a good, forthright nonconformist'. He was a teetotaller, supporting Prohibition in the USA, was a great financial supporter of overseas missions and played the organ in local Methodist mission halls. In recognition of his benefactions towards the Newcastle and Durham Dental and Medical Schools, he was granted a DCL (Durham) in 1948. His interest in art resulted in his financial sponsorship of statue of Charles Wesley at the New Room, Bristol; he collected paintings by Henry Perlee Parker and was painted three times by Frank O. Salisbury.
He was Lord Mayor of Newcastle 1918 and bequeathed his town house, 'Thurso', to the Newcastle Council as its Mansion House, a role it still fulfils. He is buried in the Nonconformist section of Newcastle's Jesmond Old Cemetery.