page_title: Coutts (1797 EIC ship)
section_title: EIC voyage #3 (1803-04)
hierarchical_section_title: Coutts (1797 EIC ship) / Career / EIC voyage #3 (1803-04)
caption_attribution_description: English: The fleet of the East India Company homeward bound from China engaging and repulsing a French squadron near the Straits of Malacca, on 15 February 1804.
context_page_description: Coutts was launched in 1797 and made eight voyages to India and China for the British East India Company. She participated in two notable engagements, the action of 4 August 1800, and the battle of Pulo Aura. She was broken up in 1815.
context_section_description: After the commencement of the Napoleonic Wars, Captain Robert Torin required a new letter of marque, which he received in absentia on 20 June 1803, after he had sailed Coutts from the Downs on 6 May. Before she left for China, the artist John Constable sailed in her in April from London to Deal; Captain Torin was a friend of Constable's father. Coutts arrived at Whampoa on 1 October. Homeward bound, she crossed the Second Bar on 11 January 1804.
  Coutts was one of the East Indiamen of the China Fleet that participated at the:
  Coutts did not actually engage the French. She reached Malacca on 18 February and Penang on 1 March. She reached St Helena on 9 June, and arrived at Long Reach on 15 August. Plantagenet escorted the fleet from St Helena to England.
  The EIC voted a £50,000 prize fund to be divided among the various commanders at the battle and their crews. Torin received 500 guineas, and a piece of plate worth 50 guineas. Each seaman received six guineas.  Lloyd's Patriotic Fund and other national and mercantile institutions made a series of awards of ceremonial swords, silver plate, and monetary gifts to individual officers. Lloyd's Patriotic Fund gave each captain a sword worth £50, and one worth £100 to Nathaniel Dance, the Commodore of the China Fleet. Dance refused a baronetcy but was subsequently knighted.
caption: Commodore Dance's Indiamen (centre) protect the merchant fleet (right) and engage Admiral Linois's squadron (left) during the Battle of Pulo Aura, 1804. Painting by William Daniell
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