page_title: East India Company
section_title: Ships
hierarchical_section_title: East India Company / Ships
caption_attribution_description: English: Painting of the East India Company's settlement in Bombay and ships in Bombay Harbour
context_page_description: The East India Company, also known as the Honourable East India Company, East India Trading Company, the English East India Company or the British East India Company, and informally known as John Company, Company Bahadur, or simply The Company, was an English and later British joint-stock company. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies, and later with Qing China. The company ended up seizing control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong after the First Opium War, and maintained trading posts and colonies in the Middle Eastern Gulf called Persian Gulf Residencies.
  Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India.
context_section_description: Ships of the East India Company were called East Indiamen or simply "Indiamen".
  During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the East India Company arranged for letters of marque for its vessels such as the Lord Nelson. This was not so that they could carry cannon to fend off warships, privateers, and pirates on their voyages to India and China (that they could do without permission) but so that, should they have the opportunity to take a prize, they could do so without being guilty of piracy. Similarly, the Earl of Mornington, an East India Company packet ship of only six guns, also sailed under a letter of marque.
  In addition, the company had its own navy, the Bombay Marine, equipped with warships such as Grappler. These vessels often accompanied vessels of the Royal Navy on expeditions, such as the Invasion of Java.
  At the Battle of Pulo Aura, which was probably the company's most notable naval victory, Nathaniel Dance, Commodore of a convoy of Indiamen and sailing aboard the Warley, led several Indiamen in a skirmish with a French squadron, driving them off. Some six years earlier, on 28 January 1797, five Indiamen, the Woodford, under Captain Charles Lennox, the Taunton-Castle, Captain Edward Studd, Canton, Captain Abel Vyvyan, Boddam, Captain George Palmer, and Ocean, Captain John Christian Lochner, had encountered Admiral de Sercey and his squadron of frigates. On this occasion the Indiamen also succeeded in bluffing their way to safety, and without any shots even being fired. Lastly, on 15 June 1795, the General Goddard played a large role in the capture of seven Dutch East Indiamen off St Helena.
  East Indiamen were large and strongly built and when the Royal Navy was desperate for vessels to escort merchant convoys it bought several of them to convert to warships. Earl of Mornington became HMS Drake. Other examples include:
  HMS Calcutta
  HMS Glatton
  HMS Hindostan (1795)
  HMS Hindostan (1804)
  HMS Malabar
  HMS Buffalo
  Their design as merchant vessels meant that their performance in the warship role was underwhelming and the Navy converted them to transports.
caption: Ships in Bombay Harbour, c. 1731
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Vue de Bombay en Inde vers 1731. Au centre les entrepots de la Compagnie anglaise des Indes orientales (comptoirs). A droite un chateau avec le drapeau de l'Union Jack et a gauche, de nombreux entrepots. Au premier plan les bateaux de la compagnie. Peinture de George Lambert (1710-1765) et Samuel Scott (1703-1772) The British Library\n'Bombay', vers 1731. The East India Company warehouse is in the centre, the castle is on the right with the Union Jack flying and a number of warehouses are on the left. The foreground is occupied by shipping with a large boat flying the company's colours. \u00a9Heritage Images/Leemage", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2011:08:01 15:09:34", "Image Copyright": "\u00a9Heritage Images/Leemage", "Image ExifOffset": "832", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "970", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4256", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1000", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "610"}