Aeneas (troopship)

History
United Kingdom
Name:	Aeneas
Fate:	Sunk off Newfoundland
General characteristics

Aeneas was a wooden sailing ship named after the Trojan hero of the Iliad.

She was owned by the British government and used to transport troops to garrisons across the British Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. On 23 October 1805 Aeneas was wrecked on the coast of Newfoundland with terrible loss of life.

The convoy was a large collection of shipping which was collected in the English port of Falmouth with the intention of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to supplement the garrison in Quebec with soldiers of the 100th Regiment of Foot. In addition to this unit, replacements for regiments already in Canada, the families of the soldiers being sent abroad, several government officials and numerous private passengers also took passage.

The ships were a mix of small warships, government owned transports and private merchantmen gathered together with the hope of safety in numbers from the large number of French privateers which were operating against British shipping at this time. The disadvantage to this plan was that should some crisis befall the convoy, the damage would be substantially more serious than if it had occurred amongst independently sailing ships. The convoy departed Falmouth on 29 August, expecting to make landfall in Canada sometime towards the end of September.

The passage was substantially worse than had been anticipated, with the convoy experiencing severe autumn storms in the North Atlantic, with strong winds and heavy seas. This caused a serious delay in the arrival of the convoy, resulting in the exhaustion of the ships' food and fresh water supplies and causing a surge in the spread of infectious diseases, especially in the packed troopships. The first ships began to make landfall scattered across the Canadian coast on 20 October with Two Friends being lost off the south coast of Cape Breton Island on the 22nd.

The loss of Two Friends was unfortunate, but was nothing compared to the catastrophe which befell Aeneas the following day. The heavy transport had become totally separated from the main body of the convoy some time before, and was relying on her own navigation to make the Canadian coast in appalling weather. Crammed into her hold were 347 people consisting of soldiers of the 100th, many women and children from their families and the ship's crew.

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Wikipedia