William Minshall Birchall was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but immigrated with his family to London in 1891 and received his art education there.  Though details on his schooling are scarce, there are records of his having lived in Liscard, Cheshire in 1914, and he exhibited paintings at the Walker Art Gallery in nearby Liverpool that year. He eventually settled in Hastings.

Birchall was a marine painter who worked chiefly in watercolor. His sea pictures often depict scenes in the Thames estuary and the English Channel, but he traveled as far afield as Gibraltar to capture details of surf and terrain. His paintings of deep-water sailing vessels were reproduced in numerous naval textbooks of the period including volumes of The King's Ships and Britannia's Bulwarks.

William Minshall Birchall's paintings are in the collections of the Peabody Museum, Salem and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.